Manifold 0.3.0

Manifold 0.3.0

Manifold 0.3.0 makes the Cables area a much more capable tool for understanding USB-C, Thunderbolt, charging, and display connections as they happen.

New

• Live Power Monitor. See a live graph of system power input or battery discharge, plus voltage, current, and power readings. When your Mac exposes it, Manifold also shows per-port power use, cable-resistance estimates, and charger profiles. If live per-port metering is unavailable, it clearly labels the negotiated power ceiling instead.
• USB Power Delivery contract inspection. Power Monitor and Negotiation Diagnostics now show the active PD contract alongside the power profiles a charger advertises, making it easier to see what your Mac requested and received.
• Negotiation Diagnostics. Compare the capabilities of the Mac port, cable, and connected device with the link that was actually negotiated. Manifold highlights the limiting part of the connection and calls out disagreements between a cable's e-marker and its live Thunderbolt-controller reading.
• Display Diagnostics. Inspect external-display mode, DisplayPort link rate and lane count, available bandwidth, Display Stream Compression (DSC), active adapters, and helpful Alt Mode setup hints.
• More detail for every USB-C port. Cable cards can now show a live pin and plug-orientation diagram, liquid-detection warnings, richer USB/Thunderbolt transport information, and e-marker-based cable identification.
• Remember your cables. Name a connected cable once and Manifold recognizes it when it is reconnected. Live status chips show whether a cable is performing as expected, still being verified, or needs attention.
• Connection health warnings. Manifold can flag repeated unexpected connection drops and overcurrent protection trips during the current cable session, with practical next steps.
• Detachable diagnostic windows. Open Power Monitor, Negotiation Diagnostics, or Display Diagnostics in a separate window from the screen toolbar or Window menu. Their positions and sizes are remembered across launches.

Changed

• Cable recognition and diagnostics now use the WhatCable v1.1.9 data and engine update, improving cable, vendor, power, transport, and display insight.
• Cable and diagnostic monitoring now responds primarily to hardware events, reducing unnecessary background activity while keeping live views current.
• The diagnostics interface has been streamlined around the live Cables, Power Monitor, Negotiation, and Display views.

Fixed

• Improved the reliability of live cable, power, and port diagnostics across connect, disconnect, and screen-open/close cycles.
• Cable history recording is more resilient during connection changes and retains its sampling cadence correctly.
• If Manifold cannot save a named cable, it now explains the failure instead of silently losing the action.

Install & update

• Already installed? Manifold auto-updates — pick Check for Updates… in Settings → Updates to grab it now, or wait for the next scheduled check.
• First time? Download Manifold-0.3.0.dmg, open it, drag Manifold to Applications. First launch: right-click → Open, then System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.

Manifold 0.2.0

Manifold 0.2.0

A small, focused release: it repairs the auto-update mechanism and makes CSV exports complete and safer to open in spreadsheet apps.

Fixed

• Auto-update works now. Version 0.1.0 published update metadata that macOS's updater compared incorrectly, so no release — including this one — would ever have been offered automatically. The versioning scheme has been corrected, and safeguards in the release pipeline prevent it from regressing.
• Telemetry CSV exports include your full history. Exports previously only covered ports that were plugged in at the moment you exported; history recorded for disconnected hubs, drives, and devices was silently left out. "All time" exports now include every device Manifold has ever sampled.
• CSV exports are hardened against formula injection. A USB device that reports a name starting with =, @, +, or - can no longer smuggle a live formula into an exported spreadsheet — such names are now neutralized to plain text. Numeric telemetry values (including negative ones) are unaffected.
• Fixed a slow resource leak in cable monitoring. Repeatedly plugging and unplugging USB-C or Thunderbolt devices left a small amount of kernel bookkeeping behind each cycle. Long-running sessions now stay perfectly flat.

Changed

• Update release notes now render properly formatted in the update window (0.1.0's showed raw Markdown syntax).

Install & update

• Already installed? Manifold auto-updates — pick Check for Updates… in Settings → Updates to grab it now, or wait for the next scheduled check.
• First time? Download Manifold-0.2.0.dmg, open it, drag Manifold to Applications. First launch: right-click → Open, then System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.

Manifold 0.1.0

Manifold 0.1.0 — first release

Every port, mapped.

Manifold is a free, open-source macOS menu-bar + window app that
visualizes the physical USB and Thunderbolt topology of your Mac in
real time, with per-device power draw, link-speed telemetry, and a
live battery / charger view. No network, no telemetry, no
sandbox compromises — everything is read from IOKit and displayed
locally.

This is the first public release. Everything in the list below
is new.

Highlights

Live topology

• Device tree per host. USB controllers → physical ports (P1,
  P2, …) → connected devices → daisy-chained children. Per-port
  labels stay stable across reconnects so a flapping device doesn't
  reshuffle the list.
• Hot-plug detection. IOKit-driven; the popover updates within
  ~100 ms of a connect or disconnect.
• Daisy-chain awareness. Thunderbolt devices behind hubs / docks
  nest under their parent in the tree.
• Display info. Each connected display shows resolution, refresh
  rate, panel type, and whether it's the main / built-in display.

Per-device telemetry

• Real-time power draw in watts.
• Negotiated link speed (USB 2 / 3 / 4 / Thunderbolt).
• 60-sample sparkline history per device.

Battery & charger

• Charge percentage, time-to-full / time-to-empty, charge state
  (charging, plugged in, discharging, fully charged).
• Dedicated menu-bar battery icon with the percent rendered
  inside the body and a charging bolt when external power is
  connected.
• An ∞ glyph at full charge while plugged in — and the literal
  "100" the moment you unplug, so you can watch the cell tick down.
• Notch-pop notifications for plug, unplug, low battery, full
  charge, and threshold crossings.
• USB Power Draw card showing the total draw across all
  connected devices vs. the active charger's input budget, with a
  per-device breakdown sorted by biggest consumer first.
• Cable / port identification of where the charger is connected
  — MagSafe vs USB-C — including correct handling on MacBook Pro
  M1 Pro/Max where charging through a USB-C dock previously read
  as MagSafe.

Cable diagnostics (Apple Silicon)

• Per-port USB-C / Thunderbolt card with PD power profile, active
  transport, e-marker fingerprint, and trust signals — adapted
  from the open-source WhatCable utility (MIT, relicensed
  GPL-3.0 with attribution).

Diagnostics engine

Five rules ship in the initial set:

• Running @ USB 2.0 — USB 3.x device negotiated down to a USB 2
  link.
• Power deficit — device requesting more than the port supplies.
• Cable bottleneck — TB4 device on a TB3 link.
• Daisy-chain depth — chain length past Apple's 6-device TB limit.
• Hub overcommit — sum of downstream draw exceeds the hub's
  power budget.

SD card slot

Card-reader–equipped MacBook Pros now expose the SD slot as a port
chip and a row in the topology, with the card's product name and
capacity (SDHC / SDXC) when one is inserted. Detects hot-insert and
hot-eject without waiting on an unrelated USB event.

Persistent history

• SQLite-backed event log + downsampled telemetry.
• 24 h raw / 30 d 1-min / 1 y 1-hour by default; tunable from
  Settings.

Export

• Event log + sample CSV (opens cleanly in Excel and Numbers).
• Full topology as schema-versioned JSON.
• File ▸ Export… (⌘E).

Apple Shortcuts (App Intents)

Five intents you can drop into a Shortcut or call from Spotlight:

• Get Connected Devices
• Get Power Draw
• Get Active Diagnostics
• Watch For Device Connect
• Export Topology Snapshot

Widgets

• Desktop small — device count + total power.
• Desktop medium — top 4 devices with sparklines.
• Control Center — tap to open the popover.

Settings

Sample rate, theme, notification toggles, retention sliders,
launch-at-login, and Sparkle update channel — all live-applied.

Updates & privacy

• Sparkle auto-updates with EdDSA-signed appcast.
• 100 % local. No network calls except the Sparkle update check.
• No Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirPlay, Continuity, VPN, SMB, NFS surfaces —
  Manifold is a physical-port visualizer on purpose.

Requirements

• macOS 26.0 or later.
• Apple Silicon recommended (cable diagnostics + USB-C port
  occupancy are Apple-Silicon-only; everything else works on
  Intel).

Install & update

• Already installed? Manifold auto-updates — pick Check for
  Updates… in Settings → Updates to grab it now, or wait for the
  next scheduled check.
• First time? Download Manifold-0.1.0.dmg, open it, drag
  Manifold to Applications. First launch: right-click → Open, then
  System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.