Little Snitch
The most recommended of 5 application firewalls
Shows every connection each app makes and lets you allow or block each one. Critics note it cannot stop trackers served from essential domains.
Shows every connection each app makes and lets you allow or block each one. Critics note it cannot stop trackers served from essential domains.
114 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 75
- criticize it
- 39
- approval share
- 66%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 75 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Shows each app's connections clearly
“it gives you much finer control over what's getting blocked and much better visibility into what connections your processes are trying to make”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “LittleSnitch for Linux” “LittleSnitch definitely has a better UI for showing which process is making which connections over time”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “LittleSnitch for Linux” “it tells you every call that every app you use is making, and allows you to approve or deny each one”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “LittleSnitch for Linux” - Comment from 21 May 2026 in “GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension”
Lets you allow or deny connections
“it gives you much finer control over what's getting blocked and much better visibility into what connections your processes are trying to make”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “LittleSnitch for Linux” “it tells you every call that every app you use is making, and allows you to approve or deny each one”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “LittleSnitch for Linux” “Little snitch is the best solution for firewalling off applications from the network”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app whose AI models run on your machine” - Comment from 12 May 2026 in “Obsidian plugin was abused to deploy a remote access trojan”
Alerts on suspicious outbound connections
“if @op would have had Lulu or LittleSnitch installed, they would probably have noticed (and blocked) suspicious outbound connections”
Comment from 26 Mar 2026 in “My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack” “why would any macOS user not use a network firewall like this, or similar, to block unwanted outgoing HTTP(s) requests”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors” “it would have warned me when the compromised script would have called home to that endpoint on the non-standard port”
Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “Online ad giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are needed” - Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation”
- Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “A Man Was Gifted His Dream Car by the Notorious Hacker He Put in Prison”
Blocks telemetry and update checks
“used Little Snitch to make sure I'm never getting an update downloaded or nagged about ever again”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Can you slim macOS down?” “I've been using Little Snitch for the past few years and just block all the telemetry calls.”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Apple Introduces MacBook Pro with All‑New M5 Pro and M5 Max” “Thankfully I have Little Snitch to catch most of those kind of invasions of my privacy.”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Do_not_track” - Comment from 22 Dec 2025 in “A guide to local coding models”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Can't stop trackers on essential domains
“LittleSnitch or other application firewalls won't help when programs like package managers legitimately need to access the Internet”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor” “Little Snitch only sees the domains so apps can just serve the trackers on the same domain as essential services”
Comment from 21 Jun 2026 in “Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see” “LittleSnich or whatever is no help - oftentimes data is collected by the app/site directly”
Comment from 18 Mar 2026 in “FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms” Linux version crashes or hogs resources
“Same issue, in my case only eating up half of my cores but with 100% utilization, webUI not working.”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “LittleSnitch for Linux” “It crashed my Fedora 43 installation (maxed out CPU and RAM) right after installing from .rpm.”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “LittleSnitch for Linux” “Little Snitch version 1.0.0 does not currently work with the Btrfs file system!”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “LittleSnitch for Linux” Closed source raises trust concerns
“Pointing out that a "privacy" tool has a closed-source brain isn't an attack on the dev, it's just a heads-up”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Little Snitch comes to Linux, but the core logic is closed source” “through automatic updates, a vendor can run any code, with any privileges, on your machine, at any time”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “LittleSnitch for Linux”
Other application firewalls people recommend
The four most recommended other application firewalls, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Little SnitchThis page | 75 | 39 | 66% | 12 | — | — |
| OpenSnitch | 27 | 5 | 84% | 10 | — | Approved |
| NetGuard | 22 | 4 | 85% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Portmaster | 8 | 2 | 80% | 6 | — | — |
| Local Privacy Firewall | 5 | 1 | 83% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 142 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Little snitch is the best solution for firewalling off applications from the network”
“Many apps (from exactly the people you'd expect) are doing absolutely unhinged nonsense that no-one should put up with.”
“it would have warned me when the compromised script would have called home to that endpoint on the non-standard port”
“Little Snitch would have popped up an alert the moment cURL tried to reach that remote server”
“LittleSnitch or other application firewalls won't help when programs like package managers legitimately need to access the Internet”
“it caught their hijacked chrome making all sorts of weird network calls”
“I derive lots of value from Little Snitch on my Mac, so this approach is more effective than not having anything.”
“Little Snitch only sees the domains so apps can just serve the trackers on the same domain as essential services”
“OpenSnitch, Little Snitch and PiHole can help you with all of these things.”
“It's so noisy though because of apps' built in update checks and other legitimate things”
“because I want to be aware of (and be able to turn off) the connections programs make”
“Little Snitch or LuLu for fine-grained whitelisting of network requests”
“Little Snitch can be configured to ignore synthetic inputs to its security settings”
“Thankfully I have Little Snitch to catch most of those kind of invasions of my privacy.”
“It crashed my Fedora 43 installation (maxed out CPU and RAM) right after installing from .rpm.”
“Pointing out that a "privacy" tool has a closed-source brain isn't an attack on the dev, it's just a heads-up”
“One nice thing about LittleSnitch on linux is that it comes with a web UI by default.”
“it gives you much finer control over what's getting blocked and much better visibility into what connections your processes are trying to make”
“Little Snitch version 1.0.0 does not currently work with the Btrfs file system!”
“Same issue, in my case only eating up half of my cores but with 100% utilization, webUI not working.”
“Back when I was still using macOS I loved Little Snitch and was a paying customer.”
“Little Snitch for Linux works well. For hardening a system against a determined adversary, it's not the right tool.”
“Something almost no firewalls get right is pausing connections (NOT rejecting them) until I've decided whether to allow or not.”
“Congrats to Linux users on getting a great tool from a quality development shop.”
“through automatic updates, a vendor can run any code, with any privileges, on your machine, at any time”
“LittleSnitch is must-have for macOS and trying to get equivalent functionality on Linux was painful.”
“They've been in business for over 20 years. They're not going to blow their entire business and reputation for a few Linux users.”
“it tells you every call that every app you use is making, and allows you to approve or deny each one”
“LittleSnitch definitely has a better UI for showing which process is making which connections over time”
“For your devenv, software like Little Snitch may protect your from these (I'm not 100% on DNS exfil here though)”
“if @op would have had Lulu or LittleSnitch installed, they would probably have noticed (and blocked) suspicious outbound connections”
“LittleSnich or whatever is no help - oftentimes data is collected by the app/site directly”
“I've been using Little Snitch for the past few years and just block all the telemetry calls.”
“it will certainly hamper attempts to get payloads and exploits on your machine in the first place”
“LittleSnitch is great for MacOS; it is easily configured to alert you every time your machine makes ip/domain connections”
“why would any macOS user not use a network firewall like this, or similar, to block unwanted outgoing HTTP(s) requests”
“used Little Snitch to make sure I'm never getting an update downloaded or nagged about ever again”
“paid independent Mac desktop apps (e.g. Little Snitch, Al Dente, Daisy Disk, Crossover, anything from Rogue Amoeba etc.) is that they try a lot harder to integrate well with the system”
“It's a great piece of software and they do not require upgrades excessively.”
“You can always use something like Little Snitch to not allow it to dial home.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.