Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

USB-C cables can be a mess. One cable charges at 5W, another does 100W and Thunderbolt 4, and they look identical in the drawer.

WhatCable sits in your menu bar and reads the cable data your Mac already has access to. Plug in a cable and it tells you in plain English what it can actually do: charging wattage, data speed, display support, Thunderbolt, etc.

Built in Swift/SwiftUI. Open source, free, no tracking.

GitHub: https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable

Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables
github.com

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.

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!

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

14 Inch 2021 MBPro / M1 Pro chip / Sonoma 14.5

WhatCable says "No USB-C Ports Detected".

System info clearly shows my iPhone attached to USB 3.1 Bus.