Little Snitch 6.0
Objective Development has issued Little Snitch 6.0, a major upgrade for the network traffic management utility that provides DNS encryption, a redesigned interactive traffic chart, and more convenient access to blocklists. With enhanced support for blocklists similar to the features found in Little Snitch Mini, you can easily choose from a curated list of blocklists organized by topic and get improved filtering performance when filtering network connections based on large blocklists. The revamped traffic chart provides a clearer visualization and analysis of network activity, and all connections related to one app are now grouped under one entry in the connection list.
The update also provides a configurable traffic meter appearance, enables all DNS lookups to be transmitted securely via encrypted connections to a DNS server of your choice, lets you track and optimize your firewall rules based on usage frequency, introduces customizable acoustic notifications, allows automatic rule creation for installed apps to streamline initial configuration, and requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Little Snitch is now priced at $59, and existing users can upgrade at a discounted price starting at $39. Licenses purchased on or after 1 January 2024 can be upgraded for free. ($59 new, free update, 36.1 MB, release notes, macOS 14+)
Hi friends,
A few weeks ago ObDev released Little Snitch 6, which is a paid upgrade from version 5. I’m curious if any of you have upgraded to version 6? If so, how are you finding it? A worthwhile upgrade? Any gotchas? Love it? Hate it?
Cheers.
See MPU for my reply
I upgraded immediately, no regrets. The one new feature that caught my eye was DNS encryption. Setting that up in the past usually required jumping through a few hoops if your router didn’t natively support it (mine from Ubiquiti, does not.) Totally seamless now across my Macs.
The new publicly sourced blocklists are also very nice.
And we are back to a single click on the menubar widget to show the network monitor, and click anywhere to dismiss, no remembering to Cmd-Q as in v.5. And the fact it can show LAN activity as well as WAN is either new or I missed it in prior versions.
I had some difficulties with DNS over HTTPS in Firefox, but so far it works fine when I let Little Snitch take care of it.
Has anyone who’s upgraded learned if the new encrypted DNS feature is compatible with Apple’s Private Relay?
I have iCloud’s Private Relay enabled along with Encrypted DNS to Quad9 over HTTPS and it’s working fine.
thanks. This is just what I wanted to know before upgrading! Glad to hear it works.
For me there was a speedbump in how the rules (adblock, threat and malware) work.
I use: FireHOL, HaGeZi Multi and HaGeZi Threat and browsing feels snappier than before. I don’t use the DNS feature as I use NextDNS at home, and at work the internal DNS is secured and I don’t have to add exceptions for internal stuff. If I was out and about more, then I would use the DNS feature and set it to NextDNS (custom option in the app).
So far so good. I like the I really like the DNS Encryption feature. Speeds up things drastically.