MacPeek

The tiny utilities macOS should have built in.

MacPeek is a native, lightweight, open-source collection of focused macOS menu-bar utilities for finding, inspecting and understanding the things macOS makes unnecessarily difficult to see. One small app, many Peeks — switch on the ones you want, switch off the rest.

Screenshot/GIF: add docs/screenshot.png after the first build.

Utilities

Utility	Answers	Status
PortPeek	What is using port 3000? Free it safely.	✅ Available
DisplayPeek	What display configuration am I actually running?	✅ Available
USBPeek	What is connected, and at what speed?	✅ Available
NetPeek	Is my network connection actually healthy?	✅ Available
BatteryPeek	What is my MacBook battery actually doing?	Coming soon
SleepPeek	Why isn't my Mac sleeping?	✅ Available
MemoryPeek	Is my Mac actually running out of memory?	✅ Available
CPUPeek	What is making my Mac slow or hot right now?	✅ Available
FileLockPeek	What process is using this file?	✅ Available
ProcessPeek	What exactly is this process?	✅ Available
DiskPeek	Which app is using my disk right now, and how full is each drive?	✅ Available
EnvPeek	What environment variables does this environment see?	✅ Available
DNSPeek	Which DNS servers is my Mac using, and do they respond?	✅ Available
SoundPeek	Why is my audio going to the wrong place?	✅ Available
UpdatePeek	What updates are available?	✅ Available

Open MacPeek's menu-bar icon to see the launcher. Manage utilities (or Settings → Manage utilities) lists every utility with a description, what it reads, what access it needs, and an on/off switch. A utility that is switched off does no work at all: no polling, no scanning, nothing in the launcher.

Features

• Native Swift/SwiftUI, menu-bar only (no Dock icon), light/dark/system appearance (switch from the launcher's sun/moon button)
• One launcher: CPU, Memory and Disk rings at the top, every other utility listed below with its summary and a search, one consistent compact UI
• Safe process termination shared by every utility that can kill something: re-check the target → verify the PID still owns the resource and is the same process (PID-reuse guard) → SIGTERM → verify exit and release → optional, explicit force kill (SIGKILL) after another re-check
• Utilities refresh only while their screen is open
• No account, no telemetry, no cloud. One third-party dependency: Sparkle for in-app updates. The network traffic is a once-a-day check of GitHub for a new MacPeek release (switch it off in Settings) and checks you start yourself (NetPeek pings, DNSPeek lookups, UpdatePeek's macOS and npm checks). Remote management, for the separate MacPeek Remote console, is off unless you turn it on

Install

Download MacPeek-x.y.z.dmg from Releases, drag MacPeek to Applications, launch it and look for the icon in the menu bar. Releases are Developer ID signed and notarized; verify the download against the published SHA256SUMS.

Build from source

Requires macOS 13+ and full Xcode 15+ (Swift 5.9). The standalone Command Line Tools are not enough: SwiftUI's @State macro needs the SwiftUIMacros plugin that only Xcode ships. If you see plugin for module 'SwiftUIMacros' not found, run sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer (see Troubleshooting the build).

swift build
swift test
swift run MacPeek            # runs the menu-bar app
open Package.swift           # or open it in Xcode
scripts/build-app.sh 0.1.0   # build/MacPeek.app (ad-hoc signed unless SIGN_IDENTITY is set)
scripts/make-dmg.sh 0.1.0    # dist/MacPeek-0.1.0.dmg + SHA256SUMS

Architecture

MacPeek (menu-bar app)                      Sources/MacPeek
 ├─ Shell: launcher · router · utility manager · settings · about
 ├─ SharedUI: PeekHeader · PeekRow · StatusBadge · EmptyState · CopyButton …
 └─ Utilities/<Name>/  view + module for each utility
MacPeekCore (shared, UI-free)               Sources/MacPeekCore
 └─ ProcessTerminationService · PermissionService · ProcessInspecting · ProcessUsageReader · ShellCommand · UtilityCatalog
<Name>Kit (one per utility, UI-free)        Sources/PortPeekKit, …
 └─ models · parsers · discovery · services — unit-tested with fixtures

The shell knows only utility metadata and navigation; each utility owns its models, services, views and tests. Details: docs/architecture.md. Adding a utility: CONTRIBUTING.md.

Security model

MacPeek runs as your user and never elevates privileges. It can only see and terminate what your user can. Termination never trusts a stale PID. Details: SECURITY.md.

Privacy

No account, no telemetry, no cloud. MacPeek reads local system information to show it to you and never transmits it. MacPeek asks GitHub about once a day whether a newer release exists (Settings → Check for updates automatically; update downloads are verified with an EdDSA signature). Otherwise the only network traffic is what you ask for: NetPeek's pings, DNSPeek's lookups and UpdatePeek's macOS and npm checks (Apple's update servers and the npm registry), each run only when you press the button. Each utility documents exactly what it reads (see Manage utilities).

Remote management (Settings → Remote management) is off by default. While it is off MacPeek does not listen, does not advertise itself and connects nowhere. When you turn it on, MacPeek listens on your local network and advertises itself over Bonjour (_macpeek._tcp) so a MacPeek Remote console can find it. A console can read anything only after you pair it on this Mac (a one-time code plus four words you compare on both screens), and every connection is end-to-end encrypted and checked against the paired key. Actions (freeing a port, quitting a process) are a separate switch, are allowed only for consoles you paired as "View and act", use the same safety checks as on the Mac, and are recorded in an activity log you can read in Settings. A menu-bar dot shows whenever Remote management is on. The protocol is described in docs/remote.md. Nothing goes through a MacPeek server: relay access from outside your network is not part of this release.

Roadmap

Fourteen utilities are built (PortPeek, FileLockPeek, DisplayPeek, USBPeek, SleepPeek, MemoryPeek, CPUPeek, ProcessPeek, DiskPeek, EnvPeek, NetPeek, DNSPeek, SoundPeek, UpdatePeek); BatteryPeek is next (it needs a capture from a MacBook), then global search, accessibility and localization polish → signed releases.

Contributing / License

See CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. Licensed under the MIT License.