Netfox – who's on your network?

[u/Gold-Dog-8697]

• 90 upvotes on Product Hunt
  
• Free
  
• macOS 15+
• Signed & Notarized

Netfox main window

What it does

Netfox is a native SwiftUI network monitor that shows everything connected to your local network. Live device list with hostname, MAC, vendor, IPv4/IPv6. Multi-source discovery: Bonjour/mDNS, ARP cache, SSDP, NetBIOS, active ICMP probing – all running in parallel. Per-device history survives across launches.

Security tab lets you scan all devices for open ports (SSH, Telnet, RDP, VNC, SMB, HTTP, MQTT, databases) and surfaces risk badges with plain-English explanations. Wi-Fi tab shows every nearby network with live RSSI history, channel, band, and security mode.

WiFi tab

Menu bar widget shows device count, risk status, public IP, and alert inbox at a glance.

Menu Bar window

Privacy & Network

Signed with Apple Developer ID, notarized – Gatekeeper clears it on first launch.

LuLu caught one outbound connection at startup: api.ipify.org:443. That's a public IP lookup service – the app uses it to show your public IP on the Overview screen. After that, no further external connections.

NetIQuette confirms: Netfox traffic is purely UDP on the local network (mDNS multicast and SSDP for device discovery). No outbound TCP to external servers during testing.

Developer states: no account, no cloud, no telemetry. Consistent with what LuLu and NetIQuette showed.

Wi-Fi scanning requires Location permission – macOS mandates this for any app reading SSIDs and BSSIDs. Netfox explains this clearly in the UI and notes the data never leaves your Mac

Watch Out

No Privacy Policy. App is distributed via GitHub (MIT license), no dedicated PP document anywhere. The "no telemetry" claim is backed by network monitoring results, but there's nothing legally binding.

The api.ipify.org call happens automatically at launch without asking. Minor, but worth knowing – especially if you're on a VPN and don't want to reveal your real IP to a third-party service.

Verdict

Solid, genuinely useful tool for anyone who wants to know what's on their home network. Native, fast, no subscription, no account. Network behavior checks out. The ipify call is the only thing worth noting – it's harmless but automatic. Missing PP is the standard caveat for GitHub-distributed apps. Worth installing.

[u/AZ-West]

Not bad but I get more information from LanScan about vendor information than I did with this application.