The next thing that hit me, is the new Network Monitor. What will first hit you, though, is the fact that installing Little Snitch no longer requires you to restart the Mac. There’s a prominent search bar with direct access to often used search terms like “Country” to search for traffic coming in and going out from/to a specific country and a newly structured sidebar that make using the app very efficient and pleasurable. Little Snitch 5 is, of course, totally integrated with the new, and admittedly, likeable design of Big Sur. In the upcoming update, Little Snitch will once more work as it used to be, with no circumvention possible unless you’re a really good hacker.

In Big Sur 11.1, which I am running now, the network filter is circumvented by Apple as has been stated time and again since Big Sur’s introduction on other Apple focused sites like this one. The underlying filter engine was re-built from the ground up to replace the previous kernel extension based approach which is no longer supported by macOS. The company that developed Little Snitch, Objective Development in Austria, says the main focus in the development of Little Snitch 5 was the integration of new network filter technologies introduced by Apple in macOS Big Sur.

Alerts integrate with Internet Access Policy, another, free app by Objective Development. It’s beautifully designed, tells you in terms even I - and, while I am not network illiterate, I sure am not a network whiz kid - can understand what the connection an app wants to make entails, and works silently in the background, taking up very little of your Mac’s resources. It simply is the only one worthy of that name that has all the advantages macOS users seek in an app. OK, first things first: Little Snitch is beyond comparison with other network filters.

It has been given a stunning new design, more elaborate, less technical explanation of connection alerts, improved traffic statistics, a brand new command line interface and the seamless compatibility with macOS Big Sur.

Little Snitch 5 now works on macOS Big Sur and has never been better. Little Snitch, the firewall and network filter that tells you which macOS apps leak data to servers outside your local network, has been upgraded to version 5.

Little snitch software