📶 DataHawk

DataHawk is a lightweight macOS menu bar app that monitors your 5G mobile hotspot in real time.

It sits quietly in the status bar and displays live cellular metrics — signal strength, data usage, battery level, and more — fetched directly from your router's admin API. There's no Dock icon — DataHawk is a pure status bar utility.

⬇️ Download DataHawk for macOS

Supported hotspots

Vendor	Supported Models	Feature Support
NETGEAR	Nighthawk M3, M6, M6 Pro	Full

💡 Want to add a hotspot vendor? We accept PRs!

Screenshots

DataHawk appears in your menu bar. It periodically polls the status of your hotspot, if it detects you are connected to it.

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⬇️ DataHawk connects to the router HTTP API on your private WiFi LAN...

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A NETGEAR Nighthawk M3. DataHawk is extensible, you can easily add support for new hotspot vendors.

Features

• ✅ Hotspot auto-detection — connects automatically when your Mac joins a known hotspot's WiFi network
• ✅ Live cellular metrics in the popover:
  • Cellular generation (5G / 4G / 3G / 2G / 1G / No Signal)
  • Signal strength (0–5 bars)
  • Carrier name
  • Connection status
  • Roaming indicator
  • Data used / Data limit / Data remaining
  • Battery level and charging state
  • WiFi network name and connected client count
  • Firmware update notification
• ✅ Status bar icon reflects the current state at a glance:
  • Text badge (5G, 4G, …) when connected
  • Orange badge when data usage is high
  • Red badge when battery is low
  • Faded antenna when no hotspot is detected
  • Faded cellular bars when signal is lost
  • Blinking antenna while the first router metrics fetch is in progress
• ✅ Notifications — opt-in alerts for important events (disabled by default):
  • Low battery warning when the router battery crosses the low threshold
  • Cellular signal lost when the hotspot drops to no signal
• ✅ WiFi QR share — Option-click the icon (or use the QR button) to show a scannable QR code for joining the router's WiFi

Install

Download the latest release from GitHub Releases and drag DataHawk.app into your Applications folder.

Hotspot setup procedure

1. Launch DataHawk — the antenna icon appears in the menu bar.
2. Grant Location Services permission when prompted (needed for WiFi BSSID detection).
3. Click the icon → Settings → Hotspots tab → Add Hotspot.
4. Fill in the details for your router:

Field	Description
Name	A label you'll recognise, eg. "Office M6 Pro"
BSSID	The MAC address of the router's WiFi
Vendor	Router manufacturer (eg. NETGEAR)
Username	Router admin username
Password	Router admin password
Admin URL (optional)	Override the auto-detected admin URL

5. Connect your Mac to that router's WiFi — DataHawk will now show the information from your router in your macOS menu bar.

Finding your WiFi BSSID

The BSSID is the MAC address of the router's WiFi access point. When DataHawk is running but no hotspot is configured, the popover shows the detected BSSID of the current network with a copy button — paste it directly into the settings form.

DataHawk uses the BSSID as a means to securely know when you are connected to a known hotspot. DataHawk only attempts to login to the router's administrator area for known BSSIDs, meaning your credentials are not sent to other WiFi routers (eg. your home fiber router, a public coffee shop, etc.).

⚠️ Note that the WiFi BSSID is different for your 5GHz network and your 2.4GHz network. When your MacBook gets far away from your router, then you might roam from 5GHz to 2.4GHz, therefore your BSSID will change. You will need to configure a second BSSID in DataHawk with the same credentials for your metrics to show properly on both 5GHz and 2.4GHz.

You will need to add 2 separate hotspots to support both 5GHz WiFi and 2.4GHz.

Uninstall

1. Quit DataHawk from the menu bar.
2. Delete DataHawk.app from your Applications folder.
3. Remove the login item in System Settings → General → Login Items if you had enabled it.

Build from source

Requires Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install). No third-party dependencies.

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/valeriansaliou/datahawk.git
cd datahawk

# Build DataHawk.app in the project root
make app

# Build and launch immediately (kills any running instance first, used for development)
make app-dev

# Clean all build artefacts
make clean

Release & notarize

👉 This procedure is only used by repository maintainers to release new versions of DataHawk.

1. Prior to distributing a release, create a new Git tag so that the new version is picked up during build. Tags should be formatted as such: v1.0.0.

2. Once tagged, you can build DataHawk.app:

make app

3. Finally, it needs to be packaged and notarized into DataHawk.dmg as such:

make release

4. When the final DMG has been packaged and notarized, simply draft a new release on DataHawk/releases and upload DataHawk.dmg.

👉 The website does not need to be updated, since the download button points to the DataHawk.dmg file from the latest release.

👉 You can configure your signing key by creating a local.env file with eg.:

export SIGN_ID=Developer ID Application: Your Developer Name (IDENTIFIER_HERE)

Available shortcuts

Action	Result
Click the icon	Open / close the metrics popover
Click ↻ in the popover	Force a refresh of metrics
Option-click ↻	Force full refresh of metrics (re-authenticates)
Option-click the icon	Show WiFi QR code share window
Click QR button	Show WiFi QR code share window
Click Settings	Open the hotspot and options configuration window

License

MIT — see LICENSE.