{"slug": "little-snitch", "name": "Little Snitch", "category": "networking", "category_name": "Networking and VPN", "description": "macOS application firewall that shows and controls apps' outgoing network connections.", "recommenders": 10, "commenters": 17, "warners": 0, "score": 10.641, "rising": -1.95, "first": "2025-11-16", "latest": "2026-10-20", "why": "HN commenters use it to see every network connection their Mac apps make, and to block or approve those connections one by one.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 10, "neutral": 5, "compare": 2, "warn": 0}, "spark": [2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 1, 3, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Connection visibility", "Granular blocking"], "caveat": "Paid upgrades", "short_quote": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make.", "icon": true, "domain": "obdev.at", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/", "pricing": "paid", "aliases": ["Little Snitch"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters use it to see every network connection their Mac apps make", "cites": [{"id": 771583488, "item_id": 48223968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48223968", "by": "lukewrites", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make.", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make. Probably the weirdest one I\u2019ve caught was a new seagate hdd that required you to run an executable file to be able to format the drive, which then tried to connect to baidu. https://fosstodon.org/@lukewrites/100907932236227641", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "monitoring outbound connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension"}, {"id": 779790976, "item_id": 48736936, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736936", "by": "grimjeer", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little Snitch', which informs me about all of the network connects my apps make", "excerpt": "I reboot one of my machines all the time. It's a Mac Mini running 'Little Snitch', which informs me about all of the network connects my apps make, especially browsers. One cool feature of that program is that one can temporarily grant access to a connection, for instance until the request quits, or one logs out, or one restarts a machine. I'm slowly developing permanent allow / ban lists, but I also use this feature", "context": "Mac Mini user", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Have You Restarted Your Computer This Week?"}, {"id": 735178688, "item_id": 45948668, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45948668", "by": "Barbing", "date": "2025-11-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "shoutout Little Snitch for driving the discovery.", "excerpt": "Reminds me I noticed macOS Safari pulling in the favicons somewhat frequently when I load the new tab page with favorites on it. Definitely something I don't want. Maybe I should just remove the favorites or maybe I can save them as redirects or HTML or something. Note I use private windows most often & shoutout Little Snitch for driving the discovery.", "context": "macOS Safari user", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)"}, {"id": 763292608, "item_id": 47705788, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47705788", "by": "guessmyname", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Little Snitch and so far I have only seen Claude Code connect to api.anthropic.com", "excerpt": "I use Little Snitch and so far I have only seen Claude Code connect to api.anthropic.com and Sentry for telemetry. I have not seen any Vercel connections, but I always turn off telemetry in everything before I run it. If you log in with OAuth2, it also connects to platform.claude.com . For auto updates, it fetches release info from raw.githubusercontent.com and downloads the actual files from storage.googleapis.com. ", "context": "", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vercel Claude Code plugin wants to read your prompt"}]}, {"text": ", and to block or approve those connections one by one.", "cites": [{"id": 763178576, "item_id": 47698661, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698661", "by": "parhamn", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use little snitch for a while. Great product.", "excerpt": "Okay hear me out, I use little snitch for a while. Great product. Love finding out what phones where. I make every single request (except my browser, because I'm fine with their sandbox) block until I approve. Recently I was wondering how you really have to trust something like little snitch given its a full kernel extension effectively able to MITM your whole network stack. So I went digging (and asked some agents t", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 771583488, "item_id": 48223968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48223968", "by": "lukewrites", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make.", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make. Probably the weirdest one I\u2019ve caught was a new seagate hdd that required you to run an executable file to be able to format the drive, which then tried to connect to baidu. https://fosstodon.org/@lukewrites/100907932236227641", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "monitoring outbound connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension"}, {"id": 779790976, "item_id": 48736936, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736936", "by": "grimjeer", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little Snitch', which informs me about all of the network connects my apps make", "excerpt": "I reboot one of my machines all the time. It's a Mac Mini running 'Little Snitch', which informs me about all of the network connects my apps make, especially browsers. One cool feature of that program is that one can temporarily grant access to a connection, for instance until the request quits, or one logs out, or one restarts a machine. I'm slowly developing permanent allow / ban lists, but I also use this feature", "context": "Mac Mini user", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Have You Restarted Your Computer This Week?"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is cost, including paid major upgrades and free alternatives like LuLu and OpenSnitch", "cites": [{"id": 780862688, "item_id": 48803918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48803918", "by": "sanbor", "date": "2026-07-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I pay for LittleSnitch major releases.", "excerpt": "I pay for LittleSnitch major releases. I\u2019m kind of forced to, in order to keep up with macOS major releases. Maybe they can sell the hardware which includes 1 major upgrade release. Maybe they can have a Kickstarter campaign to fund new releases.", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "macOS firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Future of Flipper Zero Development"}, {"id": 763267905, "item_id": 47704244, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704244", "by": "Suffocate5100", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I'm certainly not going to spend $60", "excerpt": "I'm glad people are building stuff for Linux, but the people who actually want something like this have likely already been using Opensnitch for years. I'm certainly not going to spend $60 for something that has been doing the job for free.", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 754690449, "item_id": 47168153, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47168153", "by": "mrexcess", "date": "2026-02-26", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Little Snitch is commercial.", "excerpt": "Little Snitch is commercial. If you want largely similar features (focused on egress), check out LuLu: https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "New AirSnitch attack breaks Wi-Fi encryption in homes, offices, and enterprises"}]}, {"text": ", and some are uneasy about how deeply it hooks into the OS.", "cites": [{"id": 763240880, "item_id": 47702555, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47702555", "by": "moduspol", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used Little Snitch on Mac a few years ago and liked it", "excerpt": "I used Little Snitch on Mac a few years ago and liked it, though I wasn't a fan of how (necessarily) deep it had to be in the OS to work. It felt like one of those things where, the moment you have any kind of network connectivity issue, it's the first thing you need to disable to troubleshoot because it's the weirdest thing you're doing. I guess what I'd really like is a middleware box or something that I could put ", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 763178576, "item_id": 47698661, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698661", "by": "parhamn", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use little snitch for a while. Great product.", "excerpt": "Okay hear me out, I use little snitch for a while. Great product. Love finding out what phones where. I make every single request (except my browser, because I'm fine with their sandbox) block until I approve. Recently I was wondering how you really have to trust something like little snitch given its a full kernel extension effectively able to MITM your whole network stack. So I went digging (and asked some agents t", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Connection visibility", "summary": "Shows which apps connect where, which has surfaced unexpected traffic like a drive utility contacting Baidu and Safari favicon fetches.", "quotes": [{"id": 771583488, "item_id": 48223968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48223968", "by": "lukewrites", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make.", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make. Probably the weirdest one I\u2019ve caught was a new seagate hdd that required you to run an executable file to be able to format the drive, which then tried to connect to baidu. https://fosstodon.org/@lukewrites/100907932236227641", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "monitoring outbound connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension"}, {"id": 735178688, "item_id": 45948668, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45948668", "by": "Barbing", "date": "2025-11-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "shoutout Little Snitch for driving the discovery.", "excerpt": "Reminds me I noticed macOS Safari pulling in the favicons somewhat frequently when I load the new tab page with favorites on it. Definitely something I don't want. Maybe I should just remove the favorites or maybe I can save them as redirects or HTML or something. Note I use private windows most often & shoutout Little Snitch for driving the discovery.", "context": "macOS Safari user", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)"}, {"id": 763292608, "item_id": 47705788, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47705788", "by": "guessmyname", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Little Snitch and so far I have only seen Claude Code connect to api.anthropic.com", "excerpt": "I use Little Snitch and so far I have only seen Claude Code connect to api.anthropic.com and Sentry for telemetry. I have not seen any Vercel connections, but I always turn off telemetry in everything before I run it. If you log in with OAuth2, it also connects to platform.claude.com . For auto updates, it fetches release info from raw.githubusercontent.com and downloads the actual files from storage.googleapis.com. ", "context": "", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vercel Claude Code plugin wants to read your prompt"}]}, {"label": "Granular blocking", "summary": "Lets users block every request until approved and build permanent allow and ban lists.", "quotes": [{"id": 763178576, "item_id": 47698661, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698661", "by": "parhamn", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use little snitch for a while. Great product.", "excerpt": "Okay hear me out, I use little snitch for a while. Great product. Love finding out what phones where. I make every single request (except my browser, because I'm fine with their sandbox) block until I approve. Recently I was wondering how you really have to trust something like little snitch given its a full kernel extension effectively able to MITM your whole network stack. So I went digging (and asked some agents t", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 779790976, "item_id": 48736936, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736936", "by": "grimjeer", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little Snitch', which informs me about all of the network connects my apps make", "excerpt": "I reboot one of my machines all the time. It's a Mac Mini running 'Little Snitch', which informs me about all of the network connects my apps make, especially browsers. One cool feature of that program is that one can temporarily grant access to a connection, for instance until the request quits, or one logs out, or one restarts a machine. I'm slowly developing permanent allow / ban lists, but I also use this feature", "context": "Mac Mini user", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Have You Restarted Your Computer This Week?"}, {"id": 771583488, "item_id": 48223968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48223968", "by": "lukewrites", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make.", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make. Probably the weirdest one I\u2019ve caught was a new seagate hdd that required you to run an executable file to be able to format the drive, which then tried to connect to baidu. https://fosstodon.org/@lukewrites/100907932236227641", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "monitoring outbound connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension"}]}, {"label": "Long-term favorite", "summary": "Users report relying on it for years, and one former Mac user says it is an app they miss.", "quotes": [{"id": 771583488, "item_id": 48223968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48223968", "by": "lukewrites", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make.", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make. Probably the weirdest one I\u2019ve caught was a new seagate hdd that required you to run an executable file to be able to format the drive, which then tried to connect to baidu. https://fosstodon.org/@lukewrites/100907932236227641", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "monitoring outbound connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension"}, {"id": 763196624, "item_id": 47699789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47699789", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little snitch is one of 2 apps I miss from when the Mac was my daily driver.", "excerpt": "Ohhh interesting. Little snitch is one of 2 apps I miss from when the Mac was my daily driver. The other app was pixelmator", "context": "former Mac daily driver", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 763178576, "item_id": 47698661, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698661", "by": "parhamn", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use little snitch for a while. Great product.", "excerpt": "Okay hear me out, I use little snitch for a while. Great product. Love finding out what phones where. I make every single request (except my browser, because I'm fine with their sandbox) block until I approve. Recently I was wondering how you really have to trust something like little snitch given its a full kernel extension effectively able to MITM your whole network stack. So I went digging (and asked some agents t", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}]}, {"label": "Temporary rules", "summary": "Access can be granted only until a process quits, the user logs out, or the machine restarts.", "quotes": [{"id": 779790976, "item_id": 48736936, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736936", "by": "grimjeer", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little Snitch', which informs me about all of the network connects my apps make", "excerpt": "I reboot one of my machines all the time. It's a Mac Mini running 'Little Snitch', which informs me about all of the network connects my apps make, especially browsers. One cool feature of that program is that one can temporarily grant access to a connection, for instance until the request quits, or one logs out, or one restarts a machine. I'm slowly developing permanent allow / ban lists, but I also use this feature", "context": "Mac Mini user", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Have You Restarted Your Computer This Week?"}]}, {"label": "Block lists", "summary": "Can be paired with external block lists.", "quotes": [{"id": 794127539, "item_id": 49632971, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49632971", "by": "emacdona", "date": "2026-09-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little Snitch with tons of block lists", "excerpt": "I used to be one of those people that would countdown the hours to Apple's launch events and tune in for the live stream. I was never someone who updated my iPhone every year, but I _did_ update my iPhone every two years. Now, I can't even remember what version iPhone I have. I just remember that I bought it after my last one stopped working (after maybe 5 or 6 years of having it). I won't lie: part of the reason is ", "context": "", "use_case": "network blocking", "switched_from": "", "story": "iPhone Duo"}, {"id": 781303904, "item_id": 48831494, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831494", "by": "tengwar2", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The software I'm using is Little Snitch on a Mac", "excerpt": "Firstly, I'm not intending any slight on you personally! In fact this might be more of an issue for you interacting with the site than for people just reading an article. There are multiple versions of the list. The authoritative site appears to be https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists, and making a fairly random choice, I used the \"medium\" version of the \"Threat intelligence feed\", and specifically the one marked", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "blocking trackers", "switched_from": "", "story": "NoiseLang: Where N = 5 is a Dirac delta"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Paid upgrades", "summary": "It is commercial software, and one user says major releases must be bought to keep up with macOS updates.", "quotes": [{"id": 780862688, "item_id": 48803918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48803918", "by": "sanbor", "date": "2026-07-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I pay for LittleSnitch major releases.", "excerpt": "I pay for LittleSnitch major releases. I\u2019m kind of forced to, in order to keep up with macOS major releases. Maybe they can sell the hardware which includes 1 major upgrade release. Maybe they can have a Kickstarter campaign to fund new releases.", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "macOS firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Future of Flipper Zero Development"}, {"id": 754690449, "item_id": 47168153, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47168153", "by": "mrexcess", "date": "2026-02-26", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Little Snitch is commercial.", "excerpt": "Little Snitch is commercial. If you want largely similar features (focused on egress), check out LuLu: https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "New AirSnitch attack breaks Wi-Fi encryption in homes, offices, and enterprises"}, {"id": 802676656, "item_id": 50167291, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50167291", "by": "prologic", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "There's plenty of software out there that you still pay for, or pay a license for. e.g: LittleSnitch, Jetbrains IDe, Plex, Final Cut Pro, etc", "excerpt": "No, not really. There's plenty of software out there that you still pay for, or pay a license for. e.g: LittleSnitch, Jetbrains IDe, Plex, Final Cut Pro, etc", "context": "", "use_case": "paid software example", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is charging for software a thing of the past?"}]}, {"label": "Free alternatives", "summary": "Commenters point to free options such as LuLu on macOS and OpenSnitch on Linux.", "quotes": [{"id": 754690449, "item_id": 47168153, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47168153", "by": "mrexcess", "date": "2026-02-26", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Little Snitch is commercial.", "excerpt": "Little Snitch is commercial. If you want largely similar features (focused on egress), check out LuLu: https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "New AirSnitch attack breaks Wi-Fi encryption in homes, offices, and enterprises"}, {"id": 763267905, "item_id": 47704244, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704244", "by": "Suffocate5100", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I'm certainly not going to spend $60", "excerpt": "I'm glad people are building stuff for Linux, but the people who actually want something like this have likely already been using Opensnitch for years. I'm certainly not going to spend $60 for something that has been doing the job for free.", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 736635616, "item_id": 46039726, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039726", "by": "Fnoord", "date": "2025-11-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little Snitch on macOS and Open Snitch on Linux have helped me a lot here", "excerpt": "I don't have a filter list for compromised proxy servers and VPNs. Do you have a link? I'd be interested in logging such. For Tor, I use [1] (formats in json, txt, md) on OPNsense, but I've also been able to indeed simply parse ASNs (which I currently use for \"Twitter, Inc.\"). > Preemptively banning all bad-reputation cloud IP ranges except whitelisted hosts has zero impact on clients. =3 This. There's outbound and i", "context": "", "use_case": "outbound personal firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Cloudflare outage might be a good thing"}]}, {"label": "Deep OS access", "summary": "Its deep system access makes it a suspect when troubleshooting network problems, and one user questions how much it must be trusted.", "quotes": [{"id": 763240880, "item_id": 47702555, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47702555", "by": "moduspol", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used Little Snitch on Mac a few years ago and liked it", "excerpt": "I used Little Snitch on Mac a few years ago and liked it, though I wasn't a fan of how (necessarily) deep it had to be in the OS to work. It felt like one of those things where, the moment you have any kind of network connectivity issue, it's the first thing you need to disable to troubleshoot because it's the weirdest thing you're doing. I guess what I'd really like is a middleware box or something that I could put ", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 763178576, "item_id": 47698661, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698661", "by": "parhamn", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use little snitch for a while. Great product.", "excerpt": "Okay hear me out, I use little snitch for a while. Great product. Love finding out what phones where. I make every single request (except my browser, because I'm fine with their sandbox) block until I approve. Recently I was wondering how you really have to trust something like little snitch given its a full kernel extension effectively able to MITM your whole network stack. So I went digging (and asked some agents t", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}]}], "who": [{"by": "tengwar2", "context": "Mac user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831494", "date": "2026-07-08"}, {"by": "sanbor", "context": "macOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48803918", "date": "2026-07-06"}, {"by": "grimjeer", "context": "Mac Mini user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736936", "date": "2026-06-30"}, {"by": "lukewrites", "context": "Mac user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48223968", "date": "2026-05-21"}, {"by": "wolvoleo", "context": "former Mac daily driver", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47699789", "date": "2026-04-08"}, {"by": "Barbing", "context": "macOS Safari user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45948668", "date": "2025-11-16"}], "tags": ["for Mac users", "for auditing app telemetry", "for privacy-conscious users"], "use_cases": ["application firewall", "monitoring network connections", "macos firewall", "paid software example", "outbound network monitoring", "network blocking"], "compared": [{"slug": "lulu", "name": "LuLu", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "opensnitch", "name": "OpenSnitch", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "ublock-origin", "name": "uBlock Origin", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47697870", "title": "LittleSnitch for Linux", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48643848", "title": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50167159", "title": "Ask HN: Is charging for software a thing of the past?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50071310", "title": "New Apple TV 4K", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630931", "title": "iPhone Duo", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48803791", "title": "NoiseLang: Where N = 5 is a Dirac delta", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"compare": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 3, "compare": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 3}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 2}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802676656, "item_id": 50167291, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50167291", "by": "prologic", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "There's plenty of software out there that you still pay for, or pay a license for. e.g: LittleSnitch, Jetbrains IDe, Plex, Final Cut Pro, etc", "excerpt": "No, not really. There's plenty of software out there that you still pay for, or pay a license for. e.g: LittleSnitch, Jetbrains IDe, Plex, Final Cut Pro, etc", "context": "", "use_case": "paid software example", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is charging for software a thing of the past?"}, {"id": 801263392, "item_id": 50078962, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50078962", "by": "IndySun", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use LittleSnitch.", "excerpt": ">...pro-tip... Thank you for the detailed suggestion. I use LittleSnitch. pi-hole previously, I must take another look. Did you catch LG spying posts?", "context": "", "use_case": "outbound network monitoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Apple TV 4K"}, {"id": 794127539, "item_id": 49632971, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49632971", "by": "emacdona", "date": "2026-09-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little Snitch with tons of block lists", "excerpt": "I used to be one of those people that would countdown the hours to Apple's launch events and tune in for the live stream. I was never someone who updated my iPhone every year, but I _did_ update my iPhone every two years. Now, I can't even remember what version iPhone I have. I just remember that I bought it after my last one stopped working (after maybe 5 or 6 years of having it). I won't lie: part of the reason is ", "context": "", "use_case": "network blocking", "switched_from": "", "story": "iPhone Duo"}, {"id": 781303904, "item_id": 48831494, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831494", "by": "tengwar2", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The software I'm using is Little Snitch on a Mac", "excerpt": "Firstly, I'm not intending any slight on you personally! In fact this might be more of an issue for you interacting with the site than for people just reading an article. There are multiple versions of the list. The authoritative site appears to be https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists, and making a fairly random choice, I used the \"medium\" version of the \"Threat intelligence feed\", and specifically the one marked", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "blocking trackers", "switched_from": "", "story": "NoiseLang: Where N = 5 is a Dirac delta"}, {"id": 780862688, "item_id": 48803918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48803918", "by": "sanbor", "date": "2026-07-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I pay for LittleSnitch major releases.", "excerpt": "I pay for LittleSnitch major releases. I\u2019m kind of forced to, in order to keep up with macOS major releases. Maybe they can sell the hardware which includes 1 major upgrade release. Maybe they can have a Kickstarter campaign to fund new releases.", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "macOS firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Future of Flipper Zero Development"}, {"id": 779790976, "item_id": 48736936, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736936", "by": "grimjeer", "date": "2026-06-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little Snitch', which informs me about all of the network connects my apps make", "excerpt": "I reboot one of my machines all the time. It's a Mac Mini running 'Little Snitch', which informs me about all of the network connects my apps make, especially browsers. One cool feature of that program is that one can temporarily grant access to a connection, for instance until the request quits, or one logs out, or one restarts a machine. I'm slowly developing permanent allow / ban lists, but I also use this feature", "context": "Mac Mini user", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Have You Restarted Your Computer This Week?"}, {"id": 778366057, "item_id": 48647878, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48647878", "by": "imagetic", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little Snitch - https://obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html", "excerpt": "Firefox Nightly - https://www.firefox.com/en-US/channel/desktop uBlock Origin - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin Ghostty - ghostty.org Homebrew - https://brew.sh Oh-my-posh - https://github.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh Zed - https://zed.dev 1Password - https://1password.com Tailscale - https://tailscale.com iStats Menu - https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus Little Snitch - https://obdev.at/p", "context": "", "use_case": "network firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 778312465, "item_id": 48644529, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48644529", "by": "mortar", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little snitch,", "excerpt": "Hammerspoon, Little snitch, iTerm2, Chezmoi, Orion", "context": "", "use_case": "firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 771583488, "item_id": 48223968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48223968", "by": "lukewrites", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make.", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been using Little Snitch on my Mac for years now because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make. Probably the weirdest one I\u2019ve caught was a new seagate hdd that required you to run an executable file to be able to format the drive, which then tried to connect to baidu. https://fosstodon.org/@lukewrites/100907932236227641", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "monitoring outbound connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension"}, {"id": 763292608, "item_id": 47705788, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47705788", "by": "guessmyname", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Little Snitch and so far I have only seen Claude Code connect to api.anthropic.com", "excerpt": "I use Little Snitch and so far I have only seen Claude Code connect to api.anthropic.com and Sentry for telemetry. I have not seen any Vercel connections, but I always turn off telemetry in everything before I run it. If you log in with OAuth2, it also connects to platform.claude.com . For auto updates, it fetches release info from raw.githubusercontent.com and downloads the actual files from storage.googleapis.com. ", "context": "", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vercel Claude Code plugin wants to read your prompt"}, {"id": 763267905, "item_id": 47704244, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704244", "by": "Suffocate5100", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I'm certainly not going to spend $60", "excerpt": "I'm glad people are building stuff for Linux, but the people who actually want something like this have likely already been using Opensnitch for years. I'm certainly not going to spend $60 for something that has been doing the job for free.", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 763240880, "item_id": 47702555, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47702555", "by": "moduspol", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used Little Snitch on Mac a few years ago and liked it", "excerpt": "I used Little Snitch on Mac a few years ago and liked it, though I wasn't a fan of how (necessarily) deep it had to be in the OS to work. It felt like one of those things where, the moment you have any kind of network connectivity issue, it's the first thing you need to disable to troubleshoot because it's the weirdest thing you're doing. I guess what I'd really like is a middleware box or something that I could put ", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 763196624, "item_id": 47699789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47699789", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little snitch is one of 2 apps I miss from when the Mac was my daily driver.", "excerpt": "Ohhh interesting. Little snitch is one of 2 apps I miss from when the Mac was my daily driver. The other app was pixelmator", "context": "former Mac daily driver", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 763178576, "item_id": 47698661, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698661", "by": "parhamn", "date": "2026-04-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use little snitch for a while. Great product.", "excerpt": "Okay hear me out, I use little snitch for a while. Great product. Love finding out what phones where. I make every single request (except my browser, because I'm fine with their sandbox) block until I approve. Recently I was wondering how you really have to trust something like little snitch given its a full kernel extension effectively able to MITM your whole network stack. So I went digging (and asked some agents t", "context": "", "use_case": "application firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "LittleSnitch for Linux"}, {"id": 754690449, "item_id": 47168153, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47168153", "by": "mrexcess", "date": "2026-02-26", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Little Snitch is commercial.", "excerpt": "Little Snitch is commercial. If you want largely similar features (focused on egress), check out LuLu: https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "New AirSnitch attack breaks Wi-Fi encryption in homes, offices, and enterprises"}, {"id": 736635616, "item_id": 46039726, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039726", "by": "Fnoord", "date": "2025-11-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Little Snitch on macOS and Open Snitch on Linux have helped me a lot here", "excerpt": "I don't have a filter list for compromised proxy servers and VPNs. Do you have a link? I'd be interested in logging such. For Tor, I use [1] (formats in json, txt, md) on OPNsense, but I've also been able to indeed simply parse ASNs (which I currently use for \"Twitter, Inc.\"). > Preemptively banning all bad-reputation cloud IP ranges except whitelisted hosts has zero impact on clients. =3 This. There's outbound and i", "context": "", "use_case": "outbound personal firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Cloudflare outage might be a good thing"}, {"id": 735178688, "item_id": 45948668, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45948668", "by": "Barbing", "date": "2025-11-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "shoutout Little Snitch for driving the discovery.", "excerpt": "Reminds me I noticed macOS Safari pulling in the favicons somewhat frequently when I load the new tab page with favorites on it. Definitely something I don't want. Maybe I should just remove the favorites or maybe I can save them as redirects or HTML or something. Note I use private windows most often & shoutout Little Snitch for driving the discovery.", "context": "macOS Safari user", "use_case": "monitoring network connections", "switched_from": "", "story": "Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)"}]}