Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

Posted by sleepingNomad 3 hours ago

Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables(github.com)

USB-C cables can be a mess. One cable charges at 5W, another does 100W and Thunderbolt 4, and they look identical in the drawer.

WhatCable sits in your menu bar and reads the cable data your Mac already has access to. Plug in a cable and it tells you in plain English what it can actually do: charging wattage, data speed, display support, Thunderbolt, etc.

Built in Swift/SwiftUI. Open source, free, no tracking.

GitHub: https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable

137 points | 43 comments

pimeys 12 minutes ago|

Cool. Just want to chime in that I wanted to see how quickly GPT-5.5 can turn this into a KDE Plasma 6 Plasmoid. Took about 10 minutes and two dollars, and now I have a nice QML app showing the same information in my taskbar.

Just wanted to say this because I feel it's really crazy that I can just do this today...

bichiliad 1 minute ago||

I love that this is a native mac app. Thanks for building this, and thanks for sharing.

sagacity 57 minutes ago||

This is pretty nice, but why do a lot of Mac apps insist on living in the menu bar?

poisonborz 41 minutes ago|

Making 1 click to access is faster than typing the app name in finder. Dock is usually full and used for different type of apps. Makes also constantly visible output possible with standard ui patterns.

UqWBcuFx6NV4r 26 minutes ago||

OK, thanks. We understand what a menu bar is.

How is this conducive to the typical usage pattern of an app like this?

kranner 58 seconds ago|||

For some reason the app supports a separate standalone window mode as well [0]. It's not clear why the developer took so much trouble to support two different modes when the menubar mode doesn't seem to add anything (like a live-updating icon for throughput).

Well, I can think of one reason why it wasn't that much more trouble. François Chollet had a nice tweet [1] on why removing human cognitive friction is resulting in needless complexity.

[0] https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/blob/main/Sources/...

[1] https://x.com/fchollet/status/2045929951539707957

awakeasleep 6 minutes ago|||

Are you saying you wish this was a desktop app and you would just open it occasionally when curious?

If so, it feels like a needlessly indirect and combative way to go about it.

bkummel 1 hour ago||

Doesn't work for me. Says "No USB-C ports detected", although I'm pretty sure my monitor is connected via USB-C, and the monitor also has a built-in USB hub where my USB keyboard is connected to.

bkummel 1 hour ago|

There's an issue on Github for this now: https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/issues/2

theanonymousone 49 minutes ago||

I would like to ask an LLM to rewrite it as Python CLI script. Is it even possible, or some Swift-only functionality is necessary?

P.S. Some time ago I learnt through HN of a one-line command in macOS which revealed the power (Wattage) of the connected charger. Can't find it now, but it was very useful.

krelas 24 minutes ago|

`system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep "Wattage"`?

mp0rta 20 minutes ago||

Great project. It would be even better if it supported platforms other than Mac.

n3storm 1 hour ago||

can something like this be done for linux? maybe a wrapper for lsusb. I just found https://github.com/doug-gilbert/lsucpd which adds PD and more.

ricardobeat 1 hour ago||

I remember seeing a recent analysis where the vast majority of cables from Amazon misreported their capabilities. Is this tool going to be able to catch those, or blindly report what the chip advertises?

Neywiny 52 minutes ago|

I think for real cables the delta could also be explained by damage or just a bad plug-in attempt, so even if you're not trying to detect counterfeit cables it could be useful to know:

1. What does the host support

2. What does the cable support

3. What does the device support

4. What actually got negotiated

kmmbvnr_ 1 hour ago||

Could it be just a console utility?

captainbland 1 hour ago|

Yeah I like the sound of the functionality but I don't like the idea of it taking up menu bar space. Console utility would be good or even a gui that can be quickly launched through spotlight

bichiliad 47 seconds ago|||

You might like Ice: https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice

piskov 5 minutes ago|||

> I don't like the idea of it taking up menu bar space

You know you can close it? :-)

brk 1 hour ago|

14 Inch 2021 MBPro / M1 Pro chip / Sonoma 14.5

WhatCable says "No USB-C Ports Detected".

System info clearly shows my iPhone attached to USB 3.1 Bus.

bkummel 1 hour ago|

There's an issue on Github for this now: https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/issues/2

wallst07 38 minutes ago||

...And claude fixed it already https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/commit/7a3ad1363ae...

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