Launching today
Hotspot Meter
A private data-usage meter for your Mac menu bar
114 followers
A private data-usage meter for your Mac menu bar
114 followers
Hotspot Meter is a free macOS menu-bar app that shows exactly how much data each Wi-Fi network and phone hotspot uses. See live download and upload speeds, track session and per-network totals, review usage history, and get an alert before reaching your data cap. Everything runs locally on your Mac: no analytics, no accounts, and no personal data collected or transmitted.
Hotspot Meter
macOS already exposes some network usage data through the Activity Monitor and network interfaces, curious what Hotspot Meter is doing that the built-in tools don't. Is it persisting session and historical data that macOS would otherwise discard on reboot, doing per-network attribution that the OS doesn't track natively, or something else that makes it worth installing alongside what's already there?
Hotspot Meter
@ansari_adin Great question. Yep, those are exactly the gaps Hotspot Meter is designed to fill.
It doesn’t replace or reinterpret macOS’s underlying network counters. It samples the system-provided interface counters and turns them into persistent, network-specific usage:
Activity Monitor is useful for live and per-process traffic, but it doesn’t maintain a durable total for each Wi-Fi network or hotspot.
Hotspot Meter attributes usage to the current SSID or tethered interface and stores cumulative download/upload totals, first-seen, and last-seen dates across app launches and reboots.
It also keeps a separate session total, shows live speeds in the menu bar, and can notify you before either the session or network total reaches a chosen limit.
Tracking can start automatically when macOS identifies a connection as expensive or tethered.
There’s no packet inspection, VPN profile, kernel extension, or per-app surveillance involved. Everything is calculated from local counters and stored on the Mac. Location permission is only needed because macOS requires it to read the Wi-Fi network name; no location data is stored.
So the distinction is less “more raw network data” and more “making that data persistent, attributable to a specific network, and useful for managing a data cap.”
Hotspot Meter
@thys_beesman That’s precisely the role I had in mind for the alerts - to help you act before reaching the cap, rather than simply explaining afterward where the data went.
Hotspot detection isn’t based on the network name or signal characteristics. For Wi-Fi hotspots, Hotspot Meter uses Apple’s Network framework, which tells apps when macOS considers the active connection “expensive.” Phone hotspots are normally classified this way by the system. USB tethering is detected separately from the active interface type.
There is one limitation: if macOS doesn’t classify a particular Wi-Fi hotspot as “expensive”, automatic tracking won’t start. You can still start tracking manually on any network, and the per-network totals and limit alerts work normally. There isn’t currently a manual “always treat this network as a hotspot” setting, but that would be a useful addition for connections macOS misclassifies.
Usage is attributed to the Wi-Fi network name rather than inferred from its name, so differently named hotspots aren’t a problem. The alert should be treated as a practical early warning rather than an exact carrier-billing figure: Hotspot Meter measures only the data used by your Mac over that connection. It cannot include data consumed directly on the phone or by other devices, and the carrier may also count traffic slightly differently.
the fact that it attributes to the network itself rather than inferring from the name is a smart detail, avoids the fake-hotspot-name problem entirely. one question on the totals - do they reset on any kind of cycle, like monthly, or is it purely cumulative since first-seen until someone manually resets it? most data caps are monthly, so lining the alert threshold up with a billing cycle rather than an all-time total seems like it'd matter a lot in practice
Hotspot Meter
@galdayan At the moment, the per-network total is cumulative from first seen until the user manually resets it. Session totals reset when tracking starts or the active network changes, and the alert can monitor either the current session or the cumulative network total.
There isn’t an automatic monthly or billing-cycle reset yet, so the current workaround is to reset that network’s counter at the start of a new cycle. You’re absolutely right that configurable billing-cycle dates would make the alerts much more practical. It’s a great candidate for a future update, adding it on my roadmap.
Congrats on the launch, Mikey! Keeping everything strictly local with zero telemetry or accounts is a massive plus for a utility like this.
Quick question on the network detection: How does Hotspot Meter handle multi-interface scenarios—for instance, if a user is connected to Wi-Fi while tethered via USB, does it strictly monitor the primary active default gateway, or track both interfaces in parallel?
Hotspot Meter
@asilozyildirim Thank you! That’s a good edge case, and the honest answer is that Hotspot Meter doesn’t currently split simultaneous usage between interfaces.
It samples eligible physical network-interface counters and attributes the combined change to the active network identity reported by macOS. In the normal single-connection case, that produces the expected result. But if Wi-Fi and USB tethering are both carrying traffic at the same time, their usage may be combined under one network rather than recorded separately.
It’s an uncommon but valid scenario, so I’ve added better multi-interface handling to the roadmap.
Really practical idea. Activity Monitor can show traffic in the moment, but persistent totals for each network make the data much more useful. The automatic hotspot detection and live menu bar speeds are great touches too. Can users export their usage history, perhaps as a CSV, for reviewing monthly data patterns?
Hotspot Meter
@cathy_cc Thank you! CSV export isn’t available yet, but that’s a great idea for a future update. Especially when paired with date ranges for reviewing monthly patterns. For now, usage history stays within the app and is stored locally on the Mac unless the user resets the counter. I’ve added export to my list of features to explore.
A private, local data-usage meter is a nice niche — a lot of people tethering off their phone have no idea how close they are to a cap until it's too late. Does it work specifically for hotspot connections, or does it track all network usage on the Mac generally?
Hotspot Meter
@ark_y_k It tracks network usage on the Mac generally, including regular Wi-Fi, phone hotspots, USB tethering, and wired connections. Usage is grouped separately for each network.
Hotspots get one additional convenience: Hotspot Meter can start and stop tracking automatically when macOS identifies the connection as metered or tethered. You can also start tracking manually on any network.
@michal_ferak Grouping usage separately per network is the right call — that's exactly the kind of detail that makes a data meter actually useful instead of just a single running total. Curious what the "one additional convenience" for hotspots turns out to be.