Spyglass WiFi

Free · Mac and iPhone

Flakey Wi-Fi? Discover why.

Spyglass WiFi keeps watch from your menu bar, records what went wrong, and tells you what changed in plain English, with no jargon.

Coming to the Mac App Store Coming to the App Store

Free. No account, no ads, no analytics, nothing uploaded.

The Overview pane: a signal strength gauge reading Strong at minus 36 dBm, with cards showing 1200 Mbps, 54 dB above noise, channel 153 and WPA3 Personal.

Track what changed

“It was working an hour ago.”

The question almost no Wi-Fi tool can answer, because none of them were running.

All noticeable change to signal, noise, speed and channel crowding is tracked, and explained in human terms.

  • Speed

    Speed has been lower

    Around 1200 → 286 Mbps for the last minute. Other people's networks are sharing your airwaves. They account for about 86% of the signal on your channel, which could explain it. This is about neighbouring networks, not the devices in your home.

  • Crowding

    Your channel got busier

    Other networks now account for about 61% of the signal here, up from 22%. A neighbour's access point moved onto your channel.

  • Signal

    Signal has been weak

    Around −78 dBm for the last few minutes, with no sudden drop behind it. A decline this gradual usually means distance. Something moved, or something new is in the way.

The History pane, titled What changed, showing a 24-hour signal chart and a list of events: Speed recovered, Speed has been lower, each with a time and an explanation.

Kept for seven days on your Mac. Never uploaded.

On the Mac

No Dock icon and no window in the way. Just the current signal in dBm next to the clock, green, amber or red. Click it for the rest.

The Overview pane: a Strong signal gauge at minus 36 dBm, with cards reading Very fast at 1200 Mbps, Very clear at 54 dB above noise, channel 153 and WPA3 Personal.

Overview

Signal, background noise, clarity, speed and transmit power, with a plain-English verdict over the top and the last five minutes charted underneath.

The Networks pane, listing every network in range with its band, channel and signal.

Networks

Every network in range, with band, channel width, Wi-Fi generation and encryption, Wi-Fi 7 included.

The Channels pane: the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands drawn as spectrum curves, each nearby network a shaded peak, with your own network highlighted.

Channels

Both bands drawn as a spectrum, so you can see who you are sitting on top of, and which channel is actually free.

The History pane, listing what changed with a plain-English explanation and a time against each entry.

History

Seven days of what changed, and what it means. The pane no other consumer Wi-Fi tool has, because none of them were running.

The Address pane, showing the IP address, netmask, gateway, DNS servers and DHCP lease.

Address

Your address, netmask, gateway, DNS servers and DHCP lease, without the terminal.

The Devices pane, listing what is on the network: this Mac, a TP-Link router, a living room TV, an iPad and an Epson printer, each with its address.

Devices

What is actually on your network. Quiet devices that advertise nothing still turn up, and it needs no root and no helper tool.

Finder

Warmer and colder as you walk, with a click that quickens as you close in. For finding the access point someone hid in a cupboard.

On the iPhone

The Now tab: a health score of 95 on a green dial, above the verdict Your Wi-Fi is fine.

Now

How the connection is behaving right now: a health score, a plain-English verdict, round-trip time and how much it varies.

The Test tab: a Router only and Router and internet switch, a dial reading 94 Mbps down and up, and the verdict Comfortable, enough for a 4K stream.

Test

Forty pings to your router, always. A download and upload against Cloudflare only if you ask, with the server and the transfer size named on screen beside the switch.

The Devices tab, listing what is on the network with each device's name and address.

Devices

What is on your network, led by the names devices advertise for themselves, since nearly everything randomises its hardware address now.

The Address tab: IP address, subnet mask, hardware address reading Withheld by iOS, IPv6 address, and the router's details below.

Address

Your address, netmask, gateway, DNS servers and route. Where iOS withholds a value, it says so rather than showing a constant.

No accounts. Nothing collected.

Both apps run in Apple's sandbox with the hardened runtime, use no private API and shell out to nothing. There is no account, no sign-in, no analytics and no advertising. Readings, the seven-day history and your addressing stay in the app's own container on your device, and there is an Erase button.

Two permissions get asked for, Location and local network access, and both are refusable. Denying either leaves the app working. It says what is hidden rather than looking broken.

Location
Apple treats the set of access points around you as a location fingerprint, so both macOS and iOS withhold Wi-Fi network names from an app that has not been granted Location. Revealing that name is the only thing it is used for. Every other measurement works without it, and your location is never read, stored or sent. On iPhone it is not even asked at launch: the prompt appears only if you tap Show network name.
Local network
Needed to see what is on your network at all. Without it the Devices pane is empty, and it says so rather than pretending your network is quiet.

The full policy is on the privacy page. It is short.