ntw

A macOS network toolkit providing real-time speed metrics and simple Wi‑Fi interface management.

ntw is a fast, minimal CLI utility focused on two things:

• Live network throughput monitoring
• Managing preferred Wi‑Fi networks on macOS

It is written in Rust, async-first, and designed to feel native to the macOS command line.

Features

Real-time network speed

• Live download / upload monitoring
• Per-interface monitoring
• Configurable units: auto, bps, kbps, mbps, gbps
• Automatic unit selection (auto) for readable displays
• Automatic default interface detection (macOS)

Wi‑Fi network management (macOS)

• List preferred Wi‑Fi networks for an interface
• Remove a specific network by SSID
• Interactive multi-select removal
• Parallel removals for speed
• --dry-run mode to preview actions safely

Platform Support

• macOS only (for now)
• Linux / Windows (compile-time error by design)

ntw relies on macOS system tools such as networksetup and route.

Installation

From source

git clone https://github.com/alexandretrotel/ntw.git
cd ntw
cargo install --path .

Using Cargo

cargo install ntw
# or
cargo binstall ntw

Usage

Display real-time network speed

ntw speed

By default:

• Interface is auto-detected (falls back to en0 or eth0)
• Unit is auto (automatically selects bps/kbps/Mbps/Gbps for readable output)
• Output updates every second (by default)

You can change the update interval with the --delay option:

ntw speed --delay 500

The displayed throughput is normalized to "per second" regardless of the actual interval.

Specify interface and unit

ntw speed --iface en1 --unit mbps

If you prefer automatic, explicit auto shows the best unit for the current value:

ntw speed --unit auto

Example output:

↓     85.42 Mbps  ↑     12.03 Mbps

How auto chooses units

When --unit auto (or the default) is used, ntw selects the most appropriate unit based on the measured bits/second using SI (decimal) thresholds:

• < 1,000 bits/sec → bps (e.g., 512 bps)
• ≥ 1,000 and < 1,000,000 → kbps (e.g., 12,345 Kbps)
• ≥ 1,000,000 and < 1,000,000,000 → Mbps (e.g., 85.42 Mbps)
• ≥ 1,000,000,000 → Gbps (e.g., 1.23 Gbps)

Formatting rules are chosen to balance precision and readability (for example, small Mbps values show more decimals while large values are compact). You can override auto by passing any of --unit bps|kbps|mbps|gbps.

Note: Networking commonly uses decimal SI prefixes: 1 kbps = 1,000 bps; 1 Mbps = 1,000,000 bps.

Manage Wi‑Fi networks

List preferred networks

ntw list

With explicit interface:

ntw list --iface en0

Remove a specific network

ntw remove --ssid MyWifi

Interactive removal (multi-select)

ntw remove

You will be prompted to select one or more networks to remove.

Dry-run mode

All network-modifying commands support --dry-run:

ntw remove --ssid MyWifi --dry-run

Output example:

[dry-run] Would remove network 'MyWifi' from interface 'en0'

No system changes are made.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for details about recent changes (including the addition of auto unit selection and top-level list/remove commands).

Credits

• Async runtime powered by Tokio
• System metrics via sysinfo
• CLI parsing via clap
• Interactive prompts via inquire

Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome: https://github.com/alexandretrotel/ntw/issues

License

See LICENSE for details.