Little Snitch 2 Beta8: Taking it to a Whole New Level

I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with Little Snitch: it’s a popular network filter from Objective Development, who, incidentally, are the people behind LaunchBar. For those who don’t know: Little Snitch lets you know whenever an application or process wants to connect to the Internet and what server and port they want to connect to.

Once it catches these sneaky little programs, you can then apply rules to these connections to decide which applications can connect to what. So, I’m sure some of you are saying at this point: “It’s called a firewall mate, and Mac OS X comes with one built in”. Well actually, it isn’t a firewall in the truest sense. Firewalls block incoming traffic by blocking specific ports.

Little snitch is great as you can apply your rules on an application basis. It is also designed to protect your data from being sent out as opposed to unauthorized connections coming in. By and large, Little Snitch 1 does the job really well; it sits in the background and alerts you when it needs to. From here you can decide whether to allow or deny the connection and for what time period: just this once, until the app quits or forever. You’ll also be pleased to know that the latest beta fully supports Leopard.

Little Snitch is managed through a simple Preference Pane interface, allowing you to switch the filtering on and off, as-well as view, edit and add rules. In short it does one thing and does it well. So what will Little Snitch 2 bring to the table? Well it turns out a whole lot! This simple preference pane has been transformed into a feature packed stand-alone application.

Not only does Little Snitch 2 allow you to do everything you could with version 1, but there is also a full network monitor with a beautiful HUD telling you which applications are connected to where, when you roll over the menu bar icon for a set period of time. The menu bar icon, incidentally, is 2 neat little bar charts. One tells you how much traffic is coming in and the other, what is going out. Think iStat Menus. It’s very handy, but also optional. So if you already have a network monitor running you can decide to switch it off completely.

This, in my opinion, is a great design point, as not everyone will want the space taken up on their menu bar, or the clock cycles taken from their CPU. This kind of flexibility is reflected throughout the application. The real power, however, is in the added functionality to the configuration of Little Snitch. As I mentioned the application is no longer configured via a preference pane but instead by a stand alone application sitting in your Applications folder.

This has given the designers a lot more control over the interface, something they have used to their full advantage. Now you can retrieve info for any app and when editing your rules, you have control over pretty much anything you can think of; from what servers an application is allowed to access, to its broadcast address. All this from one brilliantly designed sheet window.

A lot of Little Snitch’s new power comes from the simplicity and brilliance of this kind of interface design. For examples, rules are now visually tied to applications with blue highlights when selected, and green dots denote whether the application has a function allowed, and red if its blocked. Although this all sounds basic, it makes configuring Little Snitch a breeze, especially when compared to the cramped preference pane Little Snitch 1 currently resides in.

Little Snitch 2 is currently in beta with no ETA as of yet. There will be discounted upgrade licenses and best of all if you recently purchased Little Snitch 1 and your serial number starts with “32” then you will receive Little Snitch 2 as a free upgrade. I really suggest you check it out; although it isn’t for everybody, this will be a stunning upgrade to an extremely functional application.

Little Snitch 2 is in public beta and is available for free from Objective Development.