iTraffic is a small per-process network meter for the Mac menu bar

One job: show who is using the network right now

iTraffic describes itself as a lightweight, open-source per-process network speed monitor for the Mac menu bar, and the About section says it keeps one job simple: show which processes are using your network right now. The feature list behind that is short and specific. Per-process upload and download speeds. A native macOS menu bar interface. Light and dark mode. And a bullet about a direct Swift driver for macOS, which the README cuts off mid-sentence, so the exact wording of the driver is not available to read. The repository is a Swift project with SwiftUI in its topic tags, and the topics also include istat, which points to the traffic statistics family of tools this sits beside. The important thing for an evaluator is the absence of features: there is no history, no budget, no per-site view and no alerting in the list, which is a deliberate scope rather than a gap in the documentation.

The README is largely an advertisement for a different product

The most unusual thing about this repository is that its README spends most of its length promoting Bytetally, a separately developed commercial edition from the same developer, linked from a Meet Bytetally link in the header. The pitch covers a native dashboard, month-to-date usage, a 7-day device trend, monthly top apps, live charts, app drill-down, and attribution through VPNs and local proxies, with a Pro tier that goes further and shows the websites and services behind the traffic, plus blocking and throttling, data caps, alerts, and CSV and JSON export. Pro is described as available through a subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase after a free trial, with current details on the project's own website. A reader looking for an evaluation of the open source tool has to push past a marketing page to reach the short About section, which is an unusual structure for a repository README and worth knowing before you clone it.

The comparison table is the clearest statement of scope

Buried in the promotional material is a capability table with three columns, iTraffic OSS, Bytetally Free and Bytetally Pro, and it is the most informative page in the repository because it draws the boundary explicitly. iTraffic has source available to inspect and modify, a minimum macOS version of 10.15, live upload and download by process or app, and a live rate in the menu bar. Every other row is empty for that column. The Mac App Store install and full sandboxing row is also empty for iTraffic, which is a concrete operational difference for anyone who does not want to run an unsandboxed helper. The guidance that follows the table: choose iTraffic if you want a small, hackable open-source utility or need to support an older macOS release, and choose Bytetally Free for a stronger ready-to-use experience. That is the author stating the audience for the open source build plainly, and it is also the reason to read the table before assuming the open source version is a subset with the same polish.

v0.2.0 removed the bundled binary

The release history is short and the most recent tag carries a message. v0.2.0 was published on 2026-05-28 with the release name "No more bundled binary", followed by v0.2.1 and v0.2.2 on 2026-08-26, both on the same day. The last push to the repository was on 2026-08-26 as well, and the repository is not archived. Removing a bundled binary is a significant change for a system level utility, because it changes where the privileged or low level component comes from and what the user has to install. The README does not spell out the mechanism, so the safe reading is that the v0.2.0 note flags a packaging change rather than a feature change, and that anyone upgrading from an earlier release should read the changelog directory in the repository before replacing a working install. The project keeps a `changelog/` directory and a `docs/` directory at the root, and a `scripts/` directory that presumably holds the build and packaging helpers.

Getting it: the releases page and a Homebrew path

Two acquisition routes are advertised in the header of the README, and only one of them is spelled out in the README. The first is a direct link to the latest release on GitHub, which is where the tagged v0.2.x builds live. The second is a Homebrew install link in the header, described as Install with Homebrew, with the anchor pointing further down the document, but the README cuts off before the recipe itself, so the exact tap and formula name are not visible here. For a project of this shape, Homebrew is the route many users will want, since it handles the update cycle, and the release page is the fallback for anyone who would rather not install a package manager formula. The repository also ships an Xcode project, `ITrafficMonitorForMac.xcodeproj`, together with a `project.yml`, which is the file format used by XcodeGen, so building from source is a matter of generating and opening the project rather than of a bespoke build script.

MIT licence and a repository shaped like a small Swift app

The licence is MIT, which is the right default for a utility someone might want to read, patch or build themselves, and the repository is not archived with a push on 2026-08-26, so the 0.2.x line is the current state of the code. The layout is what you would expect from a small Swift application: the app sources under `ITrafficMonitorForMac/`, the Xcode project at the root, `project.yml` for project generation, `docs/` for documentation with a `snapshot.png` at the top level for the README image, plus `changelog/`, `scripts/` and a `docs/images` area used by the promotional sections. There are also two agent instruction files at the root, AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md, which usually means the repository is developed with AI assistants in the loop. For a reviewer, the useful parts are the app sources and the changelog; the rest of the repository is aimed at selling a different product.

Editorial conclusion

Users who want a small, readable, MIT licensed utility that answers one question, which process is using my network right now, get exactly that here, and the fact that the project ships its own source to inspect is what separates it from the commercial product the README points at. It is the wrong tool if you want history, budgets, per-site attribution or control over an app's traffic, because the README's own comparison table places all of those in the paid edition rather than in iTraffic. Before you install anything, read the v0.2.0 release note about the removed bundled binary and confirm the driver situation on your macOS version, and take the latest release from the repository's releases page rather than a copy bundled with something else.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. foamzou/ITraffic-monitor-for-mac on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: MIT
4. README
5. Releases