How is your computer communicating with you? Browsers aren’t the only applications that send data over the Internet. There is the possibility that your word processor is phoning home, your cleanup tool may be contacting its mothership, and even Windows’ own services may be communicating with each other. While these actions are not necessarily nefarious, knowing about them is important. The free and beautiful GlassWire utility exposes all of this.
GlassWire is beautiful, which is one of its most important features. There’s no denying this: Network security is equally daunting and tedious for most users. You can make a big difference in your day if you have a tool you enjoy watching throughout the day. You can scroll through the graph in real-time and zoom out to see longer periods of time at a glance using the slider at the bottom of the window.
The next time you see your traffic spike, you can easily find out which applications on your computer caused the spike, as well as which Internet hosts they were contacting. Moreover, the graph clearly distinguishes inbound traffic (pink), from outbound traffic (yellow).
Despite this being monitored by GlassWire, it is not necessarily a bad thing: Sometimes online backup apps simply don’t want to delay your connection when you need it. Even still, keeping an eye on these matters is healthy, which is why Alerts exist. In addition, GlassWire displays unobtrusive messages in the system tray when you unlock your workstation.
With GlassWire, you not only learn about your network activity, but you also have fun doing it. A zippy, responsive interface and beautiful design make it one of its greatest triumphs. It isn’t alarmist, nor does it attempt to upsell you on anything, like many other security apps.
According to the developer’s website, “new features will be added in the future for paying supporters.”
