WhatCable
Know what your USB-C cable can really do
470 followers
Know what your USB-C cable can really do
470 followers
Why is my MacBook charging slowly? WhatCable shows USB-C cable speed, charging power, and e-marker data in plain English so you don't have to guess.
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Hi everyone!
Love small practical tools with a very clear pain point.
Every USB-C cable looks the same, but some charge fast, some are slow, some handle displays, and some quietly break your setup.
WhatCable makes that visible in plain English. It basically tells you whether the cable, charger, device, or Mac port is the problem, so you don’t have to guess why your SSD is slow, your dock is acting weird, or your display refuses to work.
Super handy stuff!
Thanks everyone, genuinely chuffed to see WhatCable here.
A few questions keep coming up, so I'll try to answer them all in one go:
iOS / iPad? Sadly not possible right now. The IOKit access WhatCable needs is blocked by the iOS sandbox. If Apple ever opens that up, I'll be there!
Linux? In progress, and I'm pretty excited about it. An official port is being built right now, alongside new features for both the free and Pro tiers. The community has also already shipped a KDE plasmoid, a GNOME CLI, and a Rust crate within hours of the HN launch, which has been amazing to watch.
Android? A separate codebase entirely, so not on the roadmap yet, but I hear you.
Windows? Not really possible right now, unfortunately. Windows doesn't expose USB-C e-marker data through its APIs the way macOS does with IOKit. Without that, there's nothing for an app to read. If Microsoft adds it, I'll be the first in the queue.
Thank you so much for the upvotes, and a huge thanks to @zaczuo for hunting WhatCable!
@daz1uk So glad to see you here! Looking forward to all the new features!
USB-C cable confusion is one of those problems that sounds trivial until you're trying to figure out why your display isn't working. Every developer has a drawer of mystery cables. Does it work on iOS too or Mac only?
Spent some embarrassing amount of time this spring suffering from slow charging on a MacBook before realizing my "big" block charger was just 60W. I have an apple charger right now but I also want to get a smaller one for travel — does the e-marker decode work reliably across no-name third-party cables as well?
Hey Zac, was on WhatCable's site and the "every USB-C cable looks the same" opening basically described my drawer at home. one thing I wanted to ask, how are you reading the e-marker data, is it through a passthrough hub or are users plugging the cable into a dedicated reader? hardware UX on this category is usually the make-or-break part.
That is really cool, Please tell me I can use this for my iPhone and iPad as well, by any chance @daz1uk?
@rknerys for the moment. I'm working as quick as I can to add more.