NetFluss

A native macOS menubar app showing real-time upload and download rates, router-wide bandwidth, historical traffic statistics, and built-in speed testing.

Latest release: NetFluss 2.1.1

Features

Menubar

• Live upload ↑ and download ↓ rates displayed in the menu bar
• Four menu bar styles: Standard, Unified pill, Dashboard, and Icon
• Separate color choices for upload arrow, download arrow, upload number, and download number
• Monospaced digits for stable layout
• Configurable font size (8–16 pt), font style (Monospaced / System / Rounded), pinned unit, and decimal precision
• Icon mode — switch to a single symbol in the menu bar and choose between multiple icon options, including the NetFluss app-style icon
• Launch at login — toggle in Preferences → Launch

Popover

• Header — total Download and Upload rates shown prominently at the top
• Adapter cards — each active network interface as a card with:
  • SF Symbol icon for Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or other adapters
  • Link speed badge (Wi-Fi TX rate or Ethernet speed)
  • Per-card DL/UL rates with coloured arrows
  • Wi-Fi frequency band (2.4 GHz / 5 GHz / 6 GHz) or "Ethernet"
  • ↺ reconnect button — cycles the adapter off and back on (Wi-Fi: no password needed; Ethernet: approved via the NetFluss helper)
  • ℹ️ Wi-Fi detail popover — click the (i) button on any Wi-Fi card to see: Standard (e.g. Wi-Fi 6 / 802.11ax), Security (WPA3 Personal, etc.), Channel & Width, RSSI, Noise, SNR, ESSID, BSSID (with copy), and Tx Rate
• IP addresses — two display modes:
  • List view — External, Internal, and Router IP, each with a one-click copy button
  • Connection flow view — visual network path from your Mac through the router (and VPN, if active) to the internet, with country flag for VPN exit nodes
• DNS Switcher — switch between DNS providers directly from the popover (enable in Preferences):
  • Built-in presets: System Default, Cloudflare, Google, Quad9, OpenDNS
  • Add your own custom DNS presets with up to four DNS servers
  • Shows the currently active DNS with a green checkmark
  • Built on a bundled privileged helper for reliable DNS changes and Ethernet resets
• Router Bandwidth — shows total WAN download/upload rates from supported routers:
  • Fritz!Box via TR-064 API
  • UniFi via the UniFi OS / controller REST API
  • OpenWRT via the ubus JSON-RPC API
• Top Apps — optional section listing the top 5 processes by current network traffic, with a relative usage bar per app (enable in Preferences)
  • Live updates while visible — app traffic refreshes live while the popup or pinned window is open
  • App filtering — hide noisy background processes (e.g. mDNSResponder) from the list via Preferences or hover to hide directly
• Pin button — turn the popup into a movable floating window so NetFluss can stay open like a live widget
• Scrollable popover — the popover is scrollable and resizable for smaller screens, preventing overflow when many adapters or sections are active
• Edge-aware popover positioning — keeps the popover fully visible when the menu bar icon sits near the left or right screen border
• Footer — quick access to Preferences, About, and Quit

Statistics

• Dedicated statistics window with 1H, 24H, 7D, 30D, and 1Y ranges
• Download and upload timelines, top adapters, and top apps
• Historical bandwidth analysis by adapter and by app
• Top adapter ranking with automatic Other grouping when many interfaces are active
• Top 10 apps for download and upload over each selected range
• Minute-level detail for the 1H view
• Optional app statistics collection with energy-conscious background sampling
• Demo/sample data mode for previewing the interface before real history accumulates
• Improved app attribution for Safari/WebKit traffic and more reliable adapter accounting for LAN/NAS transfers

Speed Test

• Dedicated speed test window launched from the menu bar icon context menu
• Integrated M-Lab and Cloudflare speed tests
• Download, upload, latency, jitter, and server details in a dedicated window
• Provider selector remembered between runs
• Right-click the menu bar icon to start a test instantly
• Speed test history can be opened without automatically starting a new test
• Persistent speed test history stored locally on the Mac
• Notes field for each saved result, useful for remembering where or why the test was taken
• Compact locale-aware timestamps in speed test history

Speed Test History

Preferences

• Refresh interval (0.5 – 5 seconds)
• Optional automatic GitHub update checks once per day, with the manual About check still available
• Show/hide inactive adapters
• Show/hide other adapters (VPN, virtual interfaces)
• Adapter grace period — keep adapters visible for 3 s, 5 s, or 10 s after they go idle, so brief inactivity doesn't make cards flicker
• Per-adapter visibility toggles, custom names (pencil button), and drag-to-reorder (≡ handle) — order and names are reflected in the popover
• Adapter list scrolls when more than 6 interfaces are shown
• Options to calculate total bandwidth from only visible adapters and to exclude VPN/tunnel adapters from totals while still showing them in the adapter list
• Display rates in bits or bytes
• Upload / Download arrow colours plus separate upload / download number colours
• Menu bar style — Standard, Unified pill, Dashboard, or Icon
• Menu bar font size (8–16 pt stepper) and font style (Monospaced / System / Rounded)
• Pinned unit — lock menu bar rates to KB/s, MB/s, or GB/s instead of auto-scaling
• Decimal places — choose 0, 1, 2, or 3 fixed decimals for menu bar rates
• Connection status mode — choose between the classic IP list or the connection flow view
• Bandwidth Statistics — toggle historical adapter statistics and app statistics separately
• Top Apps toggle
• Top Apps grace period — keep apps visible for 3 s, 5 s, or 10 s after their traffic stops, preventing the list from constantly reshuffling
• App filtering — hide specific apps from the Top Apps list; "Apps to Hide" shows all recently active processes for easy selection
• DNS Switcher — toggle to show the DNS picker in the popover; includes built-in presets plus editable custom presets with up to four server fields, visibility toggles, drag-to-reorder, and delete for each preset
• Fritz!Box Bandwidth — toggle to show total WAN bandwidth from your Fritz!Box router; configurable router address (auto-detected from gateway, fallback: fritz.box); queries TR-064 API on port 49000 (no authentication required)
• UniFi Bandwidth — toggle to show WAN bandwidth from UniFi gateways; configurable host; credentials stored securely in macOS Keychain; supports UniFi OS (UDM) and legacy controller
• OpenWRT Bandwidth — toggle to show WAN bandwidth from OpenWRT routers; configurable host; credentials stored securely in macOS Keychain; uses ubus JSON-RPC API with automatic session management
• Router address overrides — manually set the Fritz!Box, UniFi, or OpenWRT host when auto-detection is not the right gateway
• Launch at login toggle

About

• Version number with link to release notes on GitHub
• Made by Rana GmbH — www.ranagmbh.de
• Refreshed app icon introduced with NetFluss 2.x
• Check for Updates — queries GitHub Releases, shows release notes and a Download button when a newer version is found
• Optional daily background update checks with a direct link to the newest release page

Requirements

• macOS 13 Ventura or later
• Xcode 15+ or Swift 5.10+ toolchain (to build from source)

Install

Download NetFluss-2.1.1.zip from the latest release, unzip it, and move NetFluss.app to /Applications.

NetFluss is notarized and signed with a Developer ID certificate, so Gatekeeper should clear it automatically on first launch.

You can also use Homebrew to install NetFluss:

brew install --cask rana-gmbh/netfluss/netfluss

Build from source

swift build -c release

Or open Package.swift in Xcode and run the executable scheme.

Notes

• Wi-Fi SSID and band use CoreWLAN. macOS may prompt for Location Services permission to expose SSID details.
• Ethernet link speed is read from ifi_baudrate and may show — when unavailable.
• External IP is fetched from ipwho.is (with api.ipify.org as fallback).
• Popup Top Apps uses live per-process sampling while visible; historical app statistics can be enabled separately in Preferences.
• DNS changes and Ethernet resets in the packaged app use the bundled NetFluss helper and may require one-time system approval.
• OpenWRT monitoring expects ubus access to be available on the router; a manual host can help when auto-detection resolves to a different gateway.
• Speed test adapter pinning is not implemented yet; tests currently follow the default active route.

Buy me a coffee

If you enjoy using NetFluss please consider supporting the project via this link: https://buymeacoffee.com/robertrudolph

License

NetFluss is released under the GNU General Public License v3.0. Copyright © 2026 Rana GmbH