Cool. Just want to chime in that I wanted to see how quickly GPT-5.5 can turn this into a KDE Plasma 6 Plasmoid. Took about 10 minutes and two dollars, and now I have a nice QML app showing the same information in my taskbar.
Just wanted to say this because I feel it's really crazy that I can just do this today...
No need to bother maintainers, just package it up and upload it to the KDE store as a Plasma extension. Then it can appear for download in "Get New Widgets" in Plasma edit mode. Plenty of "lazy" widgets in there.
It's 1st of May here, so probably not doing it today. Looking into it a bit more when I get back from the parties. but it's basically just three files: QML for the UI, some python code to parse /proc data and a metadata file.
It's May Day, which is a labour holiday everywhere except North America commemorating the Haymarket Affair when American police brutally repressed striking workers .
In North America we have Labor Day in September to distance it from the historical associations with actual organizing and police brutality.
Thanks! HN gave me great bug reports and feature requests. Claude helped me ship fast. 16 releases in 7 hours is a lot easier with a decent pair programmer.
Agreed, especially for something like this that might get used a handful of times (I’m assuming most people don’t have myriad cables or want to check them regularly?)
The problem of course is that on my 14” screen the area to the right of the notch is already close to full and I don’t even have that many things there…
It works for me, but I understand for others it might not. So, there's now a "Show in menu bar" toggle in Settings. Turn it off and WhatCable runs as a regular Dock app with a normal window instead.
Making 1 click to access is faster than typing the app name in finder. Dock is usually full and used for different type of apps. Makes also constantly visible output possible with standard ui patterns.
For some reason the app supports a separate standalone window mode as well [0]. It's not clear why the developer took the trouble to support two different modes when the menubar mode doesn't seem to add anything (like a live-updating icon for throughput).
Well, I can think of one reason why it wasn't that much more trouble. François Chollet had a nice tweet [1] on why removing human cognitive friction is resulting in needless software complexity.
> removing human cognitive friction is resulting in needless software complexity
This is kind of a hilarious statement just on the surface. Isn't removing burden from humans the whole purpose of software? How can you call the complexity "needless"?!
(the actual tweet seems to go into a bit more detail around being incentivized to find good abstractions)
Making it trivial to generate software is making people turn their brains off. They don't think through the details and accept the "default" from an LLM which has no concern for the user experience.
I think you're conflating the burden of creation with the burden of relevance, suitability, usability and usefulness of the created artifact. The more the person in charge is disengaged, the sloppier the output is likely to be.
Thanks for creating this. I'm blind so the $16 USB tester off amazon to sort through my drawer of cables is not an option. This will stop me from needing to buy a sbc just so I have something running Linux to test cables.
Doesn't work for me. Says "No USB-C ports detected", although I'm pretty sure my monitor is connected via USB-C, and the monitor also has a built-in USB hub where my USB keyboard is connected to.
I remember seeing a recent analysis where the vast majority of cables from Amazon misreported their capabilities. Is this tool going to be able to catch those, or blindly report what the chip advertises?
The tool can only tell you what the cable says. Detecting the gauge and composition of the wires in the cable is either destructive or requires temperature probes.
Detecting whether the signal characteristics are close enough to in-spec or not requires a speed test, perhaps, but that also doesn't necessarily mean the cable is the problem if such a test failed.
I think for real cables the delta could also be explained by damage or just a bad plug-in attempt, so even if you're not trying to detect counterfeit cables it could be useful to know:
Pretty cool. What I don't understand is why both my USB@1 and USB@2 show the same connected devices. I'd expect to only see the respective devices. USB@1 is my USB-hub monitor, the other one is connected to my phone. Both show keyboard, etc. plus my phone as connected devices.
Yeah I like the sound of the functionality but I don't like the idea of it taking up menu bar space. Console utility would be good or even a gui that can be quickly launched through spotlight
Good stuff, but it's telling me that my USB-C Thunderbolt cable has been plugged in upside down but the connector handled this. I was not aware that you can plug in something into USB-C upside down!
I wasn't either (insomuch as I had never thought about it), but it makes sense if you think about it for a second. If you have one end plugged in one way, and the other end plugged in the other way, each individual wire is flipped from where it should be. The fact that you _can_ plug it in either way means that the device on one end needs to be capable of recognizing that and logically reversing it. Same as automatic crossover in Ethernet.
That's all the program is telling you. It doesn't matter that it's backwards, but technically it is.
It's the cable that is supposed to reverse itself and not the device? I'm not entirely sure I buy that - seems like it would add a lot of unnecessary complexity to every cable.
The terminating device(s) are the ones that do the flipping, not the cable. You can take a cable that works either way between two high-end device, and then connect it to at least one low-end device and it will fail to connect for one of the two orientations.
I would like to ask an LLM to rewrite it as Python CLI script. Is it even possible, or some Swift-only functionality is necessary?
P.S. Some time ago I learnt through HN of a one-line command in macOS which revealed the power (Wattage) of the connected charger. Can't find it now, but it was very useful.
For your last point, you're probably looking for something like `ioreg -raw0 -c AppleSmartBattery | plutil -extract 0.PowerTelemetryData.SystemPowerIn raw -` (The source for that last command is from the above gist: https://gist.github.com/nhecker/8e850773ff229724ce361967cc22... ) Or maybe `pmset -g ac | head -n3` is helpful, too. HTH.
Tangential, but LLT recently came out with their own lineup of USB-C cables guaranteed to be up to spec. And they have the main specs printed on each cable end, so you know what you grab.
I like the idea and thanks for sharing, but I do think folks who vibe code or use Claude should take their time using, testing, and improving app before rushing to share. This was pushed/deved like 2 hours ago
The 'plugged upside down' is weird for a USB-cable. Especially as that doesn't work. I tried plugging it 'the other way around' and it showed the same 'upside down' warning
I get that the connectors are identical but I find it odd that people find it so challenging. Thunderbolt is the thick and short cable. If it's not thick it's not gonna work well and if it's over a metre it's not gonna work well. cf my pile of thin long "basic" usb c cables.
Great, and what about non-Thunderbolt cables? How do I distinguish between power only, USB 2, USB 2+PD, and USB 3.2 cables? I've got a whole pile of cables that, without my Treedix tester, are indistinguishable re: functionality and support.
Just wanted to say this because I feel it's really crazy that I can just do this today...
Although I imagine if you don't have the motivation to make it in the first place, you likely don't have the motivation to package it.
Is that date significant somewhere? It was an nice sunny Friday for me.
In North America we have Labor Day in September to distance it from the historical associations with actual organizing and police brutality.
* Don't like menubar apps? you you can run it as a normal app
* Don't like GUIs? Now you can run it on the command line
Just look at that Changelog:
https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/releases?page=2
The problem of course is that on my 14” screen the area to the right of the notch is already close to full and I don’t even have that many things there…
For this kind of read-only tool, I doubt that’s the case. A regular application probably serves most users better.
Also, if you want users to have the option of permanently displaying this kind of info, a desktop widget (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/widgetkit) may be a better option than a menu bar item.
My menu bar is also full and, unlike the Dock, I can’t resize it to fit more.
How is this conducive to the typical usage pattern of an app like this?
Well, I can think of one reason why it wasn't that much more trouble. François Chollet had a nice tweet [1] on why removing human cognitive friction is resulting in needless software complexity.
[0] https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/blob/main/Sources/...
[1] https://x.com/fchollet/status/2045929951539707957
This is kind of a hilarious statement just on the surface. Isn't removing burden from humans the whole purpose of software? How can you call the complexity "needless"?!
(the actual tweet seems to go into a bit more detail around being incentivized to find good abstractions)
If so, it feels like a needlessly indirect and combative way to go about it.
https://github.com/exelban/stats/pull/3024
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47973621
Seems the Intel southbridge isn't known to expose the needed info.
Detecting whether the signal characteristics are close enough to in-spec or not requires a speed test, perhaps, but that also doesn't necessarily mean the cable is the problem if such a test failed.
1. What does the host support
2. What does the cable support
3. What does the device support
4. What actually got negotiated
You know you can close it? :-)
That's all the program is telling you. It doesn't matter that it's backwards, but technically it is.
WhatCable says "No USB-C Ports Detected".
System info clearly shows my iPhone attached to USB 3.1 Bus.
P.S. Some time ago I learnt through HN of a one-line command in macOS which revealed the power (Wattage) of the connected charger. Can't find it now, but it was very useful.
Gist of random (human-written) power-related commands to peek at random power info: https://gist.github.com/nhecker/8e850773ff229724ce361967cc22...
For your last point, you're probably looking for something like `ioreg -raw0 -c AppleSmartBattery | plutil -extract 0.PowerTelemetryData.SystemPowerIn raw -` (The source for that last command is from the above gist: https://gist.github.com/nhecker/8e850773ff229724ce361967cc22... ) Or maybe `pmset -g ac | head -n3` is helpful, too. HTH.
_nick
(edit1: formatting)
(edit2: there's also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677607 which seems pretty cool but is quite complex, and might be overkill)
(edit3: different method for printing adapter wattage)
What was the hardest thing you cut to keep it tiny? I keep adding "one more useful thing" and have to talk myself down.
It just tell you want the e-marker said.
You'd need proper hardware capable of testing bandwidth, power, noise, etc, which is prohibitively expensive.
Which isn't helpful if the cable has no e-marker.
That should be mandatory.
I like this tool, but I agree that it was rushed and it is still being rushed. I urge the developer to slow down and get it right.
Shipping early is an entirely valid dev strategy.