By Dan Moren
July 9, 2026 12:13 PM PT
WhatCable gives you the download on your USB cables
If you’ve ever wondered why your data transfers to external drives aren’t going as fast as you’d like, or a certain peripheral just isn’t working, you could probably use WhatCable, a helpful little app from developer Darryl Morley.
WhatCable looks at your Mac’s USB ports and anything plugged into them, and lets you know about speeds and power supply for your currently connected USB and Thunderbolt cables, as well as what their maximums are. While there are other places on your Mac that you can find this information, such as System Information, WhatCable presents it all in a well organized, easy to read manner. It even details all the devices connected to your USB hubs.
For example, after looking at it, I realized that my backup drive was only connected via a USB2 cable. Fine in general for overnight backups, but when it reminded to me when I was troubleshooting some backup issues that maybe I should switch to a high speed cable that supports USB-3.1
You can choose to run WhatCable in your menu bar, or as a standalone app; there’s also a “Show technical details” option that gives you even more information that could be helpful for troubleshooting. There are options for font size, translucency, and menu bar icon, in case you’re so inclined.
For its base functionality, WhatCable is free and available either via Morley’s site, or via homebrew. For a £9.99 one-time purchase, you can unlock WhatCable Pro, which works on up to two Macs, lets you assign names to cables so you can remember which one it is when you plug it in later, provides more in-depth diagnostics, offers live power metering to see how much juice is being delivered right now, and even more.
[via Michael Tsai]
- Holy cow did that backup go way faster. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
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