v1.3.0: The connected devices list, rebuilt, plus M1 Pro charging and cable certification

The connected devices list, rebuilt, plus M1 Pro charging and cable certification

Connected devices

• The list now shows what is plugged into what. Behind a dock chained off a display it used to be one flat pile: twelve rows, five levels deep, nine of them hubs, with the display and the Ethernet adapter lost in the middle. Now the Thunderbolt chain is the shape of the list and each device sits inside the thing it is plugged into. Same setup, four rows.
• Hubs are hidden by default. They are plumbing, and about half of every device list. Each remaining device says "via N hubs", and "Show N hubs" brings them back per port. The CLI still prints everything.
• A device that names itself is no longer listed twice. A dock reporting its own name over USB used to appear as both the dock and a device inside itself.
• Devices are named by their maker where the name alone would not tell two apart. Four identical "USB2.0 Hub" rows are not a device list.
• Devices are grouped by USB controller when a port has more than one, and --json now carries each device's serial number and USB version. Thanks @jesserobbins (#481).
• Desktop front ports attribute their devices to the port instead of leaving them unattached.

Cables

• USB-IF certification, read off the cable. Cables carrying a certificate (XID) show a "USB-IF certified" line with the manufacturer. No network lookup.
• "Certified but unlisted" is its own case. A cable advertising an ID that USB-IF doesn't publish used to look identical to a cable with no ID at all. It now gets a neutral line saying so. Certification is voluntary and Apple's own cables land here, so it is a fact about the ID, never a verdict on the cable.
• The raw XID is in the JSON output for anyone scripting against it.
• Cable reports no longer record the speed in whatever language the app was running in. Reported values now come from the cable's own bits, so the same cable reads the same everywhere. Thanks @VailElla (#461).
• Six more cables in the database, and cables reporting a placeholder vendor ID are no longer described as coming from a registered vendor.
• Two database rows were showing my working notes instead of a product name, so a cable could be "identified as" something that wasn't a name at all. Fixed, and the build now refuses rows like that. Thanks @cannotcollide for identifying the Apple Thunderbolt 4 Pro Cable that surfaced it.

Power and charging

• M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra now see their charging contract. macOS never reports what the charger and port agreed on that silicon, so the per-port card sat waiting forever. The figure was in the SMC all along. Thanks @official-Cromatin for the report and the detail on #491.
• A charger that is plugged in but not being drawn from is explained, not flagged as a fault.
• Stale power-contract wattage is no longer reported as live, on any surface. Thanks @offyotto (#466).
• The widget stops showing a charge that has ended. Its buffer waited on a slower signal than the app window did.
• MagSafe is counted on its own line in the "nothing plugged in" message.

Fixed

• Port cards no longer claim a live data link while macOS is withholding it, and no longer advise a bigger charger for a cable they have already identified.
• The mid-session fault banner stopped implying you caused it. It fired after two connection events, which one ordinary reconnect can produce on its own.
• Cable Diagnostics stopped stuttering. It was running its own copy of every hardware watcher alongside the app's.
• The refresh icon turns when a refresh runs, so pressing it visibly does something. Thanks @dhruvsheth10 (#492).
• The Power Monitor button and the page it opens use the same icon. It used to change under you as you clicked it. Spotted by @aguilaair.
• Port health counters are live and land on the right port.
• The menu bar popover is clamped to the screen so it cannot run off the bottom.
• Monitors running at 1.62 Gbps (RBR) are labelled correctly.
• Lost your licence key? There is a form on the support page now, and the success page shows your key right after purchase.

Also

• whatcable.uk has been rebuilt: new homepage, Pro page, press page and Field Notes, including a new piece on whether your USB-C cable is actually Thunderbolt.
• The power reporting path was rebuilt behind the scenes. Same numbers from the same places, but one piece of code now decides things that used to be decided in three. You should not see a difference. If a port card looks wrong on this build, that is the change to blame and I want to hear about it.
• The diagnostic test kit collects two more probes, covering the system power adapter and per-hub port statistics.

Known and deliberate

The device count at the bottom of the popover still counts some hubs twice. USB 2.0 and USB 3.x are separate wires, so one hub chip registers with macOS twice. I would rather leave a duplicate in the count than risk hiding a real device to remove it.

Thanks

Translations from @bovirus (Italian) and @jimmyorz (Traditional Chinese), who also caught the hub controls shipping in English only. And to the beta testers who put four builds through their desks: @jimmyorz, @aguilaair, @cannotcollide, @themadturk7, @Caruso8677, @Mostxlnt and @aldobalducci.