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Getting started with Little Snitch

Show Network Monitor Show Network Monitor

Do you know about your Mac’s secret double life? All the time when you think it’s just the two of you, innocently hanging out online, your Mac is in contact with other computers and gossips behind your back about your likes and dislikes.

But this is not something you have to put up with! Little Snitch will show you every single connection attempt of your computer. And you’ll stay in control of all your data.

Observing or controlling: It’s up to you!

Silent Mode

Intro

In Silent Mode you finally turn the tables: From now on you won’t miss a single connection attempt of your Mac. Just sit back and watch what was formerly going on unnoticed. You can decide later what you want to allow – and what to deny.

Follow the chatter in Network Monitor

To open Network Monitor just click on the Little Snitch icon in the status menu and choose “Show Network Monitor”. You will find a list of all the apps which recently initiated an Internet connection. With just one click you can allow or deny these connections in the future.

Show Network Monitor
Show Network Monitor
  • The blue buttons indicate that you have not yet taken a decision about this connection. You can either click on d to deny or on a︎ to allow it.
  • Click on the disclosure triangle to reveal which server the app in question has contacted.
  • In this example, all connection requests by Safari are allowed, whereas requests from Pages are denied.

To allow, or not to allow, that is the question

In the Network Monitor you will find a lot of information about every server your computer has been in contact with. This information helps you to decide whether you want to allow or deny similar connections in the future.

Show Network MonitorOh Server, where art thou?

You can see the location of every server your computer contacted on the world map. Learn more about the world map

Show Network MonitorConsult the Internet Access Policy

If you don’t see the Inspector yet, just click on the i-button in Network Monitor. Now you will easily find the Research Assistant in the Inspector. Click on “Look up in Online Database” to retrieve more information about the selected connection.
Learn more about Internet Access Policy

Show Network MonitorSearch the web

Sometimes it’s best to just google a connection. You will find information on the developer’s website, on social media, dedicated blogs and many more sites on the Internet.

Show Network MonitorGive it a try

If you experience any problems with a connection, just look what happens when you change a rule. Every decision can easily be reversed.
How to manage rules in Network Monitor?
Which rules affect my app?

Alert Mode

In Alert Mode you are in the driver’s seat. Every connection attempt on which you have not yet decided will be brought to your attention. You decide which app is allowed to contact which server. You can be sure that no data will transmitted until you have consented.

Decide immediately with connection alerts

  • If you are not sure about the consequences of a rule, just make it temporary and see if it fits your needs.
  • Do you want to allow all connections of an app? Or just to one particular domain? You can decide right away.
Show Network Monitor

To allow, or not to allow, that is the question

A decision is only as good as the information it was based on. Use the full power of the connection alert to make better decisions about your data.

Show Network Monitor

Show Network MonitorConsult the Internet Access Policy

Click on the Research Assistant Button to retrieve more information about the connection.
Learn more about Internet Access Policy

Show Network MonitorSearch the web

Sometimes it’s best to just google a connection. You will find information on the developer’s website, on social media, dedicated blogs and many more sites on the Internet.

Show Network MonitorGive it a try

If you experience any problems with a connection, just look what happens when you change a rule. Every decision can easily be reversed.
How to manage rules in Network Monitor?
Which rules affect my app?

Your Mac’s Network Activity

via Network Monitor

In Network Monitor you can see and analyze all the network activity of your computer. Furthermore, you can easily and intuitively decide which connections to allow and which to deny.

How to open Network Monitor?

Click the Little Snitch icon in the status menu and choose “Show Network Monitor”.

Show Network Monitor
Show Network Monitor

What is going on here?

Network Monitor reveals all the apps which recently sent (or tried to send) data.

  • By clicking on the disclosure triangle you can see all the servers this app tried to contact.
  • The filter allows you to focus on what is relevant to you (e.g. only the denied connections).
  • Click here to clear the current selection.
Network Monitor

How to manage rules in Network Monitor?

Network Monitor
Network Filtering

You can create and manage rules with a single click on the rule icons.

  • The colored icons show that these rules are applied for the entire app. In this example, all connections from or to Pages are denied.
  • The gray icon tells you that there is a more specific rule for this app, allowing or denying only certain connections. The Calendar is only allowed to connect to google.com.
Learn more

Mac, whom are you talking to?

Network Filtering

By clicking on the map icon you can see the connections of your computer on the world map.

  • Network FilteringYour Mac’s current location
  • Network FilteringServer registered at a specific location
  • Network FilteringServer registered in a country
  • Network FilteringGroup – zoom in to see all grouped locations
Learn how to set your location manually
Network Monitor

Where to find even more details?

Network Monitor
Network Filtering

Click on the Sidebar icon to open the Inspector. There you will find more information about the selected app and its connections to the Internet: Like: How much data was sent and received? How many connections did Little Snitch deny? When did the selected app connect first – and when last – to the Internet?

  • The Internet Access Policy tells you why an app wants to connect to the Internet. This information is provided by the app’s developer or Little Snitch itself.
  • When you move the mouse over the Inspector window, you will notice that some information, like “hostname”, “country” or “city” will be highlighted. When you click on these fields they will be used as an additional filter criteria.

Rule Management

via the Rules Window

The Little Snitch Rules Window lists all the rules, no matter when and how you created them. It’s the right place to comfortably check, edit, and delete them. Or even add some new ones.

How to open the Rules Window

Click the Little Snitch icon in the status menu and choose “Little Snitch Rules…”.

Show Network Monitor
Show Network Monitor

One rule to rule them all…?

When you look at your rules, you will see that some of them (seemingly) contradict each other. But Little Snitch uses a hierarchy of rules, so you can easily predict which rule takes precedence over another. Let’s look at an example. Say you want to use Chat.app, a popular app with a shady reputation, so you create a general rule to deny connections to any server. But this will render the app useless, so you’ll need a second, more specific rule which allows connections to the chat.com domain.

Show Network Monitor

Now Little Snitch shows you that Chat.app also connects to a server named statistics.chat.com, something you definitely don’t want. Another, even more specific rule will deny this connection. Sounds complicated? Actually it isn’t. Just give it a try and then open the Rules Window. You will find that all the rules are already sorted according to their priority.

How to create a new rule?

Network Monitor
  • Click on “+” in the Rules Window.
  • Just type the name of the app for which you want to create a rule. Or click on the disclosure triangle and select “Choose Application…”.
  • Now define the content of your rule. In this example “Allow” “Outgoing Connections” to “Domains” “obdev.at”.
Learn more

We make Suggestions you can refuse

Network Monitor

Little Snitch enables you to create rules in many different ways and on many different hierarchical levels. This may lead to redundant rules or invalid rules. Suggestions help you with cleaning up your existing rule set, as well as with creating new rules.

  • Click here to show all “Suggestions”.
  • Rules become invalid when the targeted app was moved or uninstalled. You can either delete those rules or set the right location of the app.
  • A rule is redundant when its effect is not different from a more general rule. For example: When Safari is allowed to connect to any server, the rule allowing Safari to connect to the domain apple.com becomes redundant.
  • Little Snitch can help with Suggestions when you create a new rule. For example, when you had a temporary rule for a connection before, Little Snitch will suggest you use the same rule again.
Learn more about Suggestions
Network Monitor

Which rules affect a certain app?

Little Snitch’s Rules Window comes with a handy feature to show all rules applying to a single app. Perform a right-click on the app and choose “Focus on Rules Affecting [app]”.

Show Network Monitor

How to search for a particular rule?

You will find the search box right above the rules in the Little Snitch Rules Window. Type in some search term to filter all your rules. Let’s try this: Type in “Deny” and you will find a list of all the rules denying Internet access.

Show Network Monitor

Look into connection problems

Everybody has experienced this: You want to open a service on the Internet and it just doesn’t work. Sometimes the server is down or busy, sometimes you are not connected to the Internet at all.

When you have ruled out those reasons, you should look into you Little Snitch Network Monitor. You will find a couple of very helpful search features to support your inquiry.

Show Network Monitor

Select a search feature to get more details.

Show Network Monitor

Search

Use the search box to look for specific names or keywords.

Show Network Monitor

Watch

At the moment a connection gets denied the corresponding line flashes red.

Show Network Monitor

Filter

Use the filter to list denied, incoming or other connections

Show Network Monitor

Inspect

See if rules apply for a certain connection by checking the state of the rule icons.

Show Network Monitor

Display

Right-click and choose “Show corresponding rule” to display all applying rules in the Little Snitch Rules Window.

In most cases, apps contact online services directly. But sometimes they use an extra helper process which is created by the app.

Rule related Problems

In the first case it’s easy to identify a connection problem. But if an app uses a helper process, you might not be able to link the name or icon of the process to the app which is affected by the problems. You will have to use the search features of Network Monitor to find out, which process causes the problems.

In the following examples, we will show you how to solve rule-related problems.

Example 1: App communicates directly with online service

Show Network Monitor

Let’s assume you are trying to visit twitter.com but the site cannot be reached.

First you check if you can visit other websites or if you can reach twitter.com on your mobile device. If this works you should open Network Monitor in Little Snitch.

  • Show Network MonitorSearch for “twitter.com” to show all processes connecting to that domain.
  • Show Network MonitorOpen the filter and choose “Denied”.
  • Show Network MonitorNow you see only those apps which are denied connections to twitter.com.
Show Network Monitor

Just change the responsible rule by clicking the allow icon. Your browser should now be able to access twitter.com. Just give it a try!

Example 2: App uses a helper process to connect to the Internet

Assume that you are trying to manually update your browser. But every time you click the “Check for Updates” button you get an error message telling you that the “Update failed”.

Show Network Monitor

A quick check reveals that no connections requested by Google Chrome are denied. It is possible that Google Chrome uses a helper process to look for updates on behalf of Google Chrome.

This helper process may have a different name than “Google Chrome” and a different icon. At first, it might be impossible for you to identify the right process.

The following steps demonstrate how to trace down such a process.

  • Show Network MonitorAdd a new filter “From Now” to show only connections that have been active since that filter was activated.
  • Show Network MonitorNow switch back to your browser, but position your application window to still see the Network Monitor at the same time.
  • Show Network MonitorOnce you click to update your browser, you will see the line “ksfetch” flash red. This is the process responsible.
Show Network Monitor

Just allow the connection by clicking on the allow icon. The helper process can now connect to the Internet and will finish update without further problems.

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© 2023 Objective Development Software GmbH

About UsPressPrivacyTerms