Kilobat

Kilobat is a macOS menu-bar app for seeing which apps use the connection, marking a network metered, and finding why a connection is slow. Live per-app traffic, a Wi-Fi menu with AirDrop and Bluetooth switches and a QR code for the password, speed and stutter tests, and a check that names the layer where a request failed are free. Keeping the Mac awake during downloads or coding-agent runs is free too. Closing the lid still sleeps the Mac unless you allow a helper, which can stop at a battery floor, when the Mac gets hot, or after a time limit.

Pro is listed at $29 once, with a 7-day trial and 14-day refunds. There is no subscription and no account. Pro adds Travel and Work profiles that block apps, a prompt for a new app’s first connections, pausing updaters on metered networks, data budgets and per-app quotas, Wi-Fi health, a connection map, signal radar, history, and a comparison against a provider’s usage figure. Enforcing app and website rules needs the network filter. Monitoring and diagnostics work without it.

A separate command-line tool, also named kilobat, is free and licensed GPL-3.0 only. It needs no account and no license key. Install it with brew install seifip/kilobat/kilobat, which builds from source and needs Xcode 16 or later, or use the copy inside the Mac app. kilobat mcp is a local MCP server, so a coding agent can run diagnostics on the Mac. Tools that change settings are marked so the agent can ask first. The desktop app is a separate product under its own terms.

Pro can record an agent network log: hosts, ports, byte counts and process names for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other recognised agents, including short-lived child processes such as curl and npm. Prompts, replies and packet contents stay out of the log, and the log stays on the Mac. Watching it from the CLI and reading it through MCP are free. Background recording, flags and 30 days of sessions are Pro. Agents that run inside an editor extension host, such as Cline in VS Code, share that editor’s processes and cannot be separated. Docker, virtual machines, and some traffic macOS makes on a process’s behalf are left unattributed.

Traffic history, network names and rules stay on the Mac. Diagnostics contact test services, and license activation and update checks contact their services. Optional product analytics stay off until you agree. Requires macOS 14 or later. A free Kilobat Lite edition for the Mac App Store is described as coming soon; per-app traffic, rules, the network filter and the CLI are in the website download. Developed by Philip Seifi. The supplied cover and gallery image are official promotional artwork, not app screenshots. The product page includes an interactive browser demo with fictional networks and apps.