AstonJ

AstonJ

Do you use LittleSnitch?

I think I’ve used LittleSnitch since my first ever Mac - does anyone else with a Mac use it?

For those not aware of it, whenever an app tries to access the internet it asks you whether you’d like to grant it permission - which can be allow or deny, and either for forever, until quit, just once, or for a specified time.

Handy for all sorts of things, such the Google Chrome updater - which seems to ping for new versions every 5 seconds! You can just deny forever, then when you want to upgrade, simply delete the associated rule and it will ask you for permission next time it tries to connect to the internet.

I love it because I hate the idea of apps connecting to the internet without my knowledge!

Do you use LittleSnitch?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Considering it now!

0 voters

Most Liked

dimitarvp

dimitarvp

Never did but would like to.

Also TripMode – to limit which apps can even use the net – is something I am looking forward to use actively.

Dusty

Dusty

I burned out on Little Snitch. I lasted about 5 years, but I find the constant breakage and allowlisting to be really fatiguing when I just want to work.

For the security conscious, there is also Google Santa, but again, there is a lot of configuration to use it. I lost a year of my life to Arch Linux back in the day. No one saw me - I don’t really remember what happened - I just remember a lot of blinking when I first saw the sun again… I think about 6 months of that time was spent trying to center my desktop wallpaper image. Which is my way of saying that, if you went with macOS because you just want things to work without tinkering, these additional layers of security can really rob you of that feeling. What’s challenging for me as a non-security-professional is really quantifying risk. If you have no idea how vulnerable you are, it’s difficult to decide how much effort one should expend in this arena.

AstonJ

AstonJ

LittleSnitch is a lot easier now - it comes with recommended rules and even suggests how to act. After about a week of normal use, I don’t think I have had to configure anything other than new software now :smiley:

I do like Apple’s latest security measures tho, such as having to give access to apps if they want to access things like your documents folders.

Thanks for the link to Santa, I wasn’t aware that it existed!

Where Next?

Popular Macos topics Top

AstonJ
I think I’ve used LittleSnitch since my first ever Mac - does anyone else with a Mac use it? For those not aware of it, whenever an app ...
New
New
New
First poster: bot
With 2020 now squarely behind us, it’s safe to say that the year didn’t go as anyone planned, but at Panic we somehow managed to release ...
New
First poster: SmithyTT
Joe Biden had a question for Tim Cook: Why, the then-vice president wanted to know, couldn’t Apple make the iPhone in the U.S.? It was Ja...
New
First poster: AstonJ
Vitals is a little Mac app I built recently that shows you which programs are slowing your computer down. It lives in the menu bar, keepi...
New
First poster: bot
GitHub - ExistentialAudio/BlackHole: BlackHole is a modern macOS virtual audio driver that allows applications to pass audio to other app...
New
New
First poster: maxmannen
Generate images from text using Stable Diffusion 1.5. Simply describe the image you desire, and the app will generate it for you like mag...
New
New

Other popular topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
Take your Go skills to the next level by learning how to design, develop, and deploy a distributed service. Start from the bare essential...
New
AstonJ
Curious to know which languages and frameworks you’re all thinking about learning next :upside_down_face: Perhaps if there’s enough peop...
New
AstonJ
Do the test and post your score :nerd_face: :keyboard: If possible, please add info such as the keyboard you’re using, the layout (Qw...
New
AstonJ
Biggest jackpot ever apparently! :upside_down_face: I don’t (usually) gamble/play the lottery, but working on a program to predict the...
New
mafinar
This is going to be a long an frequently posted thread. While talking to a friend of mine who has taken data structure and algorithm cou...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Rebecca Skinner @RebeccaSkinner Welcome to our latest author spotlight, where we sit down with Rebecca Skinner, auth...
New
DevotionGeo
I have always used antique keyboards like Cherry MX 1800 or Cherry MX 8100 and almost always have modified the switches in some way, like...
New
New
CommunityNews
A Brief Review of the Minisforum V3 AMD Tablet. Update: I have created an awesome-minisforum-v3 GitHub repository to list information fo...
New
AstonJ
If you’re getting errors like this: psql: error: connection to server on socket “/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432” failed: No such file or directory ...
New