• Free Video Apps For Mac

18 Best Free Apps for Mac 03 June 2019; by: Cezar Popescu When you buy your first Mac or MacBook you will be a bit overwhelmed by how different macOS is in comparison with other operating systems. So to get started right away you will need some free apps. Jul 02, 2018 Price: Splashtop is available on the Apple app store for $2.99. It is free for Android devices. Download Splashtop Wired Xdisplay ($3) 5. Team Viewer: Free Alternative to Duet Display. Team Viewer is one of the biggest players when it comes to remote desktop services. It offers free services to consumers and a paid version for commercial use.

Little Snitch is a popular Mac app that detects outbound connections and lets you set up rules to block those connections. Once installed, Little Snitch monitors your internet traffic and every time it detects an outbound connection, for example, Adobe Reader trying to access the internet, it pops up a window and ask you if you want to allow the connection one time, or make a rule to allow Adobe Reader to access the Internet but just not go to adobe.com

In short, Little Snitch is one of the best apps, to keep an eye on your Mac’s Internet connections. But, do we really need an alternative? Well, for starters, it costs you over $40 and upgrades are extra. This alone can be a reason to look for alternatives that cost nothing or at least relatively cheaper than Little Snitch.

Free Video Apps For Mac

So here are some alternatives to Little Snitch for Windows and macOS. Let’s start with Mac first.

Read: The Best WiFi Analyser For Mac

Little Snitch Alternatives for Mac

1. Murus Lite

Mac’s own firewall comes with one of the best features available in network firewalls called the PF (packet filter). However, for some users, it may seem a little complex to use and this is where Murus comes in the picture.

Murus brings the PF feature of a firewall in an intuitive, drag & drop based interface that lets you define your own rule set and control the network permissions on your mac. What makes it different from the existing inbuilt firewall? Well, here’s the catch. Common firewalls like Mac’s own PF, restrict and monitor the inbound and outbound network traffic based on attributes like IP address, ports, protocols etc. and by restricting the network functions itself, it affects all the applications. Murus, on the other hand, helps to use PF feature to convert the network firewall into an application firewall wherein you can allow or restrict movement of data packets for each application individually which even helps in restricting spreading of virus, worms or data leak by an application.

Price: Murus comes in three versions: Murus Lite (Free), Murus Basic ($10), and Murus Pro ($17). While Murus lite is the free version of the application, Murus Basic and Murus Pro are the paid versions that come packed with some extra features like logs Visualizer, Vallum, and all companion apps.

Check it out here: Murus

2. Radio silence

Radio Silence is yet another application to control your app specific firewall functions. It has one of the simplest interfaces which allows you to keep a tab on applications. Softwares that try to connect with a remote server outside the user’s control are blocked instantly. The Firewall has its eye on the incoming traffic, Radio Silence does the opposite and looks for outgoing traffic too.

Little Snitch vs Radio Silence

Initially, Little Snitch gives you too many notifications about connection, which may feel overwhelming to some users. Although, it goes away after few weeks of usage.

Radio silence, on the other hand, is quite silent in the functionality as it runs in the background. without any active tabs, icon display or pop-ups. Once you block an app with Radio Silence, it stays blocked, there is no notification or pop-ups, ever.

Price: Radio Silence costs around $9 and comes with a testing trial of 30 days. You get your money back if it doesn’t meet your expectations. There’s also a 24-hour free trial available for those who want to test this software’s limits in a single stretch.

Check out: Radio Silence

3. Private Eye

Private Eye, a real-time network monitoring application that allows monitoring of your live connections made by an application. The app also indicates the presence of an online server where such information is being transmitted.

It displays all attributes of the live connections that the applications in your system have to the web like the time of connection and the IP address of the server connected to.

Although you can filter and view the results by application or by incoming and outgoing traffic, Private Eye doesn’t have the power to alter any of these connections. You get just enough information to know when an app connects to a server without authorization.

Price: Private Eye is a free application.

Check out: Private Eye

4. Hands off

Hands off is one of the most trusted applications and alternative to Little Snitch when it comes to network privacy. It is also an all-rounder application that gives protection both as the network firewall and application-specific firewall. It controls both inbound and outbound traffic of an application.

Read: See What Others Are Browsing on Your WiFi

Hands off is a little different from other similar applications. It protects and monitors the disk access, and giving an intuitive and user-friendly interface. This app monitors and blocks access to the files stored in your system from online servers and also from the local applications. It prevents the applications from seeking IP address, accessing disk data, erasing disk data, and even storing cookies. Its disk management is so strict that it even controls the read and write permissions of the disk data files even if the applications have access to the files but the interface and usage come in handy.

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Price: Hands Off is otherwise an expensive application ($49) but can be tried and tested for free with limited functionality. The advanced functions of the application are accessible in the paid version. The tutorial file that tags along with the application setup is informative.

Check out: Hands Off

5. TCPBlock

TCPBlock is by far the lightest application based firewall available for mac and is absolutely free. It also monitors and protects both inbound and outbound traffic on your mac and can prevent certain applications from opening network connections to unknown servers while you are online.

TCPBlock is implemented as a loadable kernel module which contains all the blocking logic. You can configure it in the System Preferences > TCPBlock preference pane or with the TCPBlock command line utility. All the configuration changes are made in a configuration file on the hard disk of your mac.

Price: Although TCPBlock has discontinued from the market, its previous versions are still available to download for free. It requires only 1.1 MB of your disk space. TCPBlock has the best reviews that an application can get and is still one of the favorites amongst the users. The only catch in using the available version of this application is turning off the SIP (System Integrity Protection). SIP when deactivated, allows third-party applications to run on your mac.

Check out: TCP Block

6. Security Growler

Little Snitch is still hands-down the best connection alerting software available for Mac, we suggest to check it out if you want a comprehensive firewall/alerting system, and are willing to pay a few bucks to get it. Security Growler, on the other hand, is centered around monitoring log files for any kind of pattern. It doesn’t just monitors the TCP connection table but also alerts you of Sudo events, Keychain authorization events, and anything else you can think of that’s reported to a log file.

This app is significantly more lightweight than Little Snitch, it comes in at <15MB of RAM used, simply because it aims to solve a simpler problem than Little Snitch. This application is not designed to prevent malicious connections, that’s what firewalls are for, it’s just meant to keep an unobtrusive log, and alert you whenever important security events are happening. The more informed you are, the better you can protect yourself.

Security Growler is a menu bar based application that sends you notifications whenever one of its monitored patterns have a log update. One thing that sets it apart from other applications, Prowl which sends you notifications over your iPhone and iPad.

Check out: Security Growler

7. LuLu

LuLu by Objective see is another popular opinion amongst Mac users who wish to keep a check on their system’s network activity. The reason for its popularity is because the software is open source, has no ads whatsoever, and comes with all features.

LuLu aims to block all unauthorized outgoing connections unless you specifically allow them. You can choose to allow local or third-party apps and services from the separated menu available. The app interface is pretty simple yet extensive and its operations are so simple that even a child could use it.

When you first install the app you can choose to allow or disallow Apple programmes and previously installed third-party apps. These settings could be later changed from preferences. Under the ‘rules’ head, you can select the services and apps you wish to block from using network services. The app even has a passive mode where it will allow all new apps and still work in silence for the previously installed apps.

Check Out: LuLu by Objective See

Little Snitch Alternatives for Windows

While there is no true alternative to Little Snitch in Windows, we found two applications that came close.

8. Glasswire

GlassWire is quite a simple app which allows you to monitor changes in the system like microphone, webcam or apps in general. It also comes with a firewall feature just like Little Snitch, however, it isn’t that powerful. For example, Little Snitch can allow or refuse to authorize the specific domain and ports of an application trying to access a server online. GlassWire on the other hand only allows or block all connections an application attempts to initiate. There is no option to make specific rules for an app in Glasswire.

Read: 5 Best Network Monitoring Tools for Windows

Price: Glasswire follows the freemium model, The free version of Glasswire shows you which program is connected to which IP address. Although, the paid version of Glasswire has “ask to connect” feature, which gives you a pop-up when an app attempts to make a connection.

Check out: GlassWire

9. Net Limiter

Compared to Glasswire, Net Limiter is a similar alternative to Little Snitch on Windows. Once installed, the app shows you the list of all apps that are making connections to the internet along with their present download and upload speed. You can block network connectivity on individual programs or even restrict how much bandwidth a particular app gets.

Price: Net Limiter is a paid app that cost $29, however it comes with a full 30 days trial.

Check out: Net Limiter

Little Snitch Alternatives

So, these were some of the free and paid alternatives to Little Snitch. It would be nice if Apple would build such detailed functionality into macOS, but they won’t do it for as simple a reason that it’s too hard to use for a regular mac user. So, you can either spend a few bucks and buy little snitch, or use these alternatives, whatever you use, let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments. And if you ask my opinion, I’d suggest LuLu because of its intuitive UI and simple controls.

If you’ve ever felt a need of a secondary display, you’d have definitely come across Duet Display. It is the most popular app that lets you use your iPad as a second display for your MacBook. The app is on top of the list no doubt but comes for a price of $20. But would you wanna burn a hole in your pocket for this? We’ve always tried to offer some of the best yet, lesser known products that you can use as alternatives. And today, we are going to see some of the best Duet Display alternatives. Let’s begin.

Some of the apps in the list are not an exact replacement of Duet Display, as they are more likely to mirror your computer display to iPad rather than using it as the second display. But nonetheless, they still do something out of the box, which is why they made into the list.

Read: Best Youtube alternative apps for iPhone/iPad

Duet Display Alternatives

1. Sidecar (upcoming)

In WWDC 2019, Apple announces, Sidecar. The perfect replacement to Duet display. Just like Duet Display, Apple’s Sidecar works directly with a wired connection or wirelessly via Bluetooth. Unlike Duet Display, there is no WiFi support, which means, it will only work within a range of few meters. Also, both iPad and Mac should be under the same iCloud account. Once connected, you can use your iPad as a mirrored desktop or secondary display. Of course, it also supports Apple Pencil.

However, most of you won’t be able to use this feature yet. You need to be running the latest software i.e. macOS 10.15 Catalina on your Mac and iPad OS on your iPad, both of them not yet released to the public. Although, you can try the public beta, which we did and unfortunately, the sidecar feature didn’t work for us as of yet. But Apple being Apple, once this feature rolls out officially, I’m sure it’s going to work flawlessly.

2. Easy Canvas: Draw on iPad for your computer

Artists all around the world have loved the idea of digitally drawing their ideas because with technology everything can be accentuated and becomes a little easier to follow through. Professional Graphic Tablets are pretty expensive on their own and it would be nice if we had a more viable option.

EasyCanvas is a mirroring app that lets you project your mac or windows computer on the iPad, pretty cool right? It is available as an app for the iPad and a software package for the computer. The computer applications are available for free and you can download it from the website.

How does it work?

EasyCanvas works as a digitizer and is very easy to install. You download the app from Apple app store on the iPad. Your computer requires a separate download which can be downloaded here. After you set up both the applications, its just plug and play. Open both the applications and connect your iPad using a USB cable and it immediately detects the device and starts projecting it to the iPad. Now the app offers a couple of different options which come in handy while you use software like Photoshop to draw. Apple Pencil (only on iPad Pro) and Wacom pen are supported by this app and you can use it to draw. It has an option to reject accidental palm touch which would come in handy.

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Second Monitor: Easy Canvas only supports screen mirroring, however, they also have an app that works as an extended display too. It is called TwomonUSB and the only issue is it cost $11, with no free trial.

Availability: EasyCanvas is available on both Mac and Windows and only works with iPad

DownloadEasyCanvas (Free 14 day trial, $12 for premium)

3. AstroPad: Digitize the iPad

Created to be a perfect tool for artists, AstroPad visualizes an artist’s vision in a digital environment using the iPad as a digital input device. iPad functions as a touch responsive screen on which you can draw on too.

Astropad is only available on Mac and works similar to EasyCanvas. It converts your iPad into a digitizer which is very useful if you work with creation tools. You get individual software for your mac and iPad, Astropad comes as a trial version with 7 days and they bill after your subscription expires.

How does it work?

To get started, install Astropad app on Mac and the iPad. You can choose the wired option and plug the USB in or connect Astropad wirelessly. The devices have to be on the same network or it won’t connect. It doesn’t take long to connect and is actually faster than most apps. It displays the screen on the iPad cropped to fit the screen but you can also adjust the size with the dedicated toolbar on the left which has a couple of different options.

Apple pencil strokes are specially configured and included with this app. The strokes are identified with the inbuilt processing system of the Apple Pencil. It sends the data to the iPad and the software recognizes the pressure, altitude, and azimuth for the most natural stroke generation.

Second Monitor: AstroPad only support screen mirroring of your Mac on your iPad, there is no option to use your iPad as a secondary display.

Availability: AstroPad is available for Mac computers only and iPad. The app can be downloaded from the website.

Price: AstroPad is available as a 14-day free trial and bills you after the trial expires. The app costs you $29.99

Download AstroPad (Free 14 day trial, $30 for premium)

4. Splashtop Wired Xdisplay: Extend your Display

I’ve personally used Splashtop for a long time and they’ve grown as a company and rolled out a few different software. Splashtop Wired Xdisplay is specially designed to convert your iPad or any mobile device for that matter into an extended screen of your computer.

How it works?

Splashtop Wired Xdisplay requires the installation of two separate software agents, one on the mobile device and the other on the computer. The desktop agent is a very simple app that works by creating a digital extended display on the desktop and then projecting it to the iPad. Rather than just projecting your extended display, you can also control the actions with the touchpad. There isn’t much left to do after that. You don’t get additional features like customized pencil strokes or palm rejection.

Second Monitor: Yes, it is just a tool to convert your iPad into a second Screen.

Availability: Splashtop Wired Xdisplay is available for Windows and Mac computers and works across all mobile device platforms including iOS, Windows, and Android. Check it out here:

Price: Splashtop is available on the Apple app store for $2.99. It is free for Android devices

Download Splashtop Wired Xdisplay ($3)

5. Team Viewer: Free Alternative to Duet Display

Team Viewer is one of the biggest players when it comes to remote desktop services. It offers free services to consumers and a paid version for commercial use. It initially offered desktop to desktop remote access over the internet. Its services are highly dependent on the network speed and it works with an encrypted key to provide security. As the mobile devices became more powerful and fast, it only made sense that we had an option of using our mobile devices as hosts or guests to log in to remote devices. TeamViewer allows any device to access a device anywhere on the planet to be accessed, provided it has the TeamViewer Software installed and a working internet connection, preferably high speed.

How it works?

Downloading the software is easy and done through their website. After installation is complete, the app displays a unique ID which is unique worldwide and you can access it only with the password generated right below. When you type the Id and password and hit enter, the app takes over the screen and starts transmitting it over the internet to the device that has accessed it. You can control the mouse and keyboards of the remote device with your own input devices. TeamViewer translates all the input values and sends them over to the remote destination. this app has one additional feature which transmits the audio from the remote destination to your device. For example, if you were to play a youtube video through TeamViewer on the remote device the video will play with audio on your device as well, this feature isn’t available with the other apps.

Second Monitor: There is no option to use your iPad as a secondary display using a TeamViewer app, however, you can still control your Computer from your iPad.

Availability: TeamViewer is available across all platforms and can be downloaded here.

Download TeamViewer (Free)

6. AirDisplay: Wireless Duet Display Alternative

AirDisplay offers a wireless option to connect your iPad or an iPhone as an extended display with your computer. It works with mac and windows users wouldn’t have to settle for any of the above options.

How it works?

It has a similar operation to other packages listed, you begin by purchasing an app for your iPad or the iPhone and download the driver app on the mac to complete the setup. Now when everything is ready, the mac window displays the connected device as an icon. You just have to click connect and just like that, it makes it an extended display. The upside to this app is it uses Wi-Fi to connect the two devices and broadcasts in high speed. You can connect up to 4 devices to make it a display, which would help in increasing productivity.

Second Monitor: Yes

Availability: It is available for Mac as a host and clients can be Windows, Mac, or Android.

Price: The client app is available on the Apple App store for $9.99. The host app is free for Mac.

Download AirDisplay ($10)

7. iDisplay: HD display and extend computer screen

iDisplay works with mac and windows both. It offers both USB and WiFi connectivity options. It is not an exclusive product and offers services across platforms like macOS, iOS, Android, and Windows.

Read: 5 Ways to Use Your Android as Second Monitor For Your Computer

How it works

iDisplay claims 60fps video transmission on extended displays but that totally depends on your device’s capability and Wi-Fi capacity. If you’re broadcasting through it, make sure the devices are on the same network. iDisplay supports multi-touch across all platforms which is better than the other apps that did offer multi-touch didn’t. It has a feature known as smart screen resolution which essentially automatically adjust your extended device’s resolution automatically. You can connect more than one device with iDisplay.

Second Monitor: Yes

Availability: This is truly cross-platform and you can connect any two devices over different platforms. Download the app here.

Price: Apple App store has this app for $14.99

Download iDisplay ($15)

Duet Display Alternatives: Final thoughts

To fuel our productivity, the apps listed in this list are versatile. EasyCanvas and AstroPad act as a mirror and a digitizer with a special apple pencil touch feature. It lets you make the best use of creation tools. If you’re looking for something more than just a digitizer, Splashtop takes the cake. It has options to make it an extended display too.

TeamViewer is free and works well wirelessly, it is best suited to mirror your computer. AirDisplay and iDisplay are paid but have distinct features like high-speed video transmission without latency wirelessly, and multi-touch across all platforms makes it a good choice for people looking for a more comprehensive app.

Read: 5 Ways iPhone/Android Can Cast Screen to TV Without Chromecast