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Flowlight 0.4.0

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@github-actions github-actions released this 24 Sep 19:36
· 262 commits to main since this release
v0.4.0
fe4ef99

What's new in 0.4.0

Peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, named at last.

Not all traffic goes to the internet. AirDrop, Handoff, AirPlay, Sidecar and Universal Control go straight to a device in the room over Apple Wireless Direct Link — no router, no internet, no address anyone else can reach. Flowlight was always counting those flows. It had no word for them, so an AirDrop of a 4 GB folder looked like a few megabytes to an address with no name.

  • Every flow carries a channel: Network, Peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, This Mac (it never left the machine) or Tunnel (inside a VPN; where it went after that isn't visible here). Narrow a report to one of them from the Reports toolbar. The channel travels with CSV exports and with anything sent to a collector, where it is attached only to the rows that aren't ordinary network traffic.
  • Peer-to-peer rows are named by the feature that opened them — AirDrop and Handoff · nearby device, Continuity · nearby device — because a link-local address tells you nothing and the device in the room has no name this Mac can learn. An app that uses the radio directly keeps its own name.
  • The two engines answer differently, and say so. The sampler reads the interface each socket is bound to, which is exact; it also means the same socket on awdl0 and on llw0 stays two rows instead of quietly merging into one. The Network Extension is handed sockets rather than interfaces, so it judges by the address: link-local means peer-to-peer. That is the coarser answer of the two.

Nothing here is newly recorded and no new permission is involved — it is the same capture, finally labelled. Bluetooth (0.4.1) and USB (0.4.2) do widen what Flowlight watches, and will each ship behind their own switch.

Install

Signed with Developer ID and notarized by Apple.

  • brew install --cask xinbetween/tap/flowlight
  • Flowlight.dmg — drag to Applications.
  • Flowlight-0.4.0.pkg — installs to /Applications; offers to quit a running copy first.

macOS 15 or later, Apple silicon and Intel.

Checksums

a24cef93cf3dc2f8a7975127091a088e44f249268eef2f00c10d60d70ea02758  Flowlight.dmg
ae5f0d021612fe7ab33de29e9ac6beafe912f90d1a8a97779e6392d7a4e46ad6  Flowlight-0.4.0.pkg
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