Hi MPUers, want to start monitoring what is connecting to the internet from my machine and wanted to see what apps are people using. I found TripMode, LuLu and Radio Silence. Any recommendations which is better in monitoring and usability?
I find tripmode is great for managing my data use on mobile. Super easy to block things like automatic updates for Setapp or macOS, but not so great for just seeing how much data individual apps use while I’m living day to day life on diferent wifi networks. I’ve yet to work out how to use it as a data usage monitor without being forced to use the blocking features, so I either have it blocking some stuff with mediocre data usage stats as a side bonus, or I have it turned off entirely doing nothing.
You can measure usage when trip mode is off, I have it running all the time in an off state and it reports usage.
+1 for Little Snitch, which is quite intimidating at first, but once configured a key tool in network management and control
Most tools give you an in the moment view of traffic, few will allow to build reports to review
Tripmode is good, but its primary objective is to kill certain traffic based on condition triggers.
Intego Netbarrier also has a preview pane that shows network traffic on application level
+1 Little Snitch Little Snitch is pretty impressive. I don’t have experience with the other apps. If you’re looking for network monitoring and alerts. Agreed that it can be overwhelming and I would recommend creating different profiles for the different situations that you have. For example, I have public, vpn, safe, and hotspot. Any new wifi will trigger the public profile. Once I’ve connected to VPN, then I’ll switch to the VPN profile. At home and work I use the safe profile. The hotspot profile is when I’m connected to my iphone and I’ll limit things like dropbox and cloud syncing.
Another recommendation is to initially have it “Silent Mode - Allow Connections” This way you won’t get alerted for every now connection which can become annoying and overwhelming.
I re-evaluated Little Snitch last year and ended up using Lulu. But that was because I just wanted to approve traffic every time a new source presented itself. Little Snitch is a better tool if you want to spend more time searching analyzing your traffic. Little Snitch also looks better than Lulu unless you enjoy the monospace terminal aesthetic.
Thanks for answering. Any reason to prefer this over LuLu which is free and open source and allow port blocking also?
Was little snitch presenting too many popups? Was that the reason
No, they were presenting the same number of popups. Lulu just did it for free. 
1 Like
That’s what I am noticing using them together. Maybe a Little Snitch user can share tell us more.
Not really. Think I found Little Snitch before Lulu and stuck to it. Upon comparison, I do like the UI of Little Snitch better but can’t comment on side-by-side functionality.
I do have Knock Knock and OverSight by Objective-See installed and am happy with the apps. Will install Lulu and have a closer look.