PingFinder Support

A network scanner for macOS, iPhone and iPad.

What it does

PingFinder finds every device on the network you are connected to and tells you what each one is: latency, manufacturer, host name, open services, and its likely operating system and device type. It also monitors latency over time, traces the route to any host, and looks up DNS records — all implemented inside the app, with no helper tool and no root access.

Getting started

Scan — the address field is pre-filled with the subnet your device is on. Press Scan and devices appear as they answer.
Allow local network access — the first scan asks for permission to find devices on your local network. Discovery finds nothing without it.
Open a device — tap or click any row for its full detail: open ports with service banners, Bonjour services and model, inferred operating system, and a place for your own name and notes.
Watch it — add a device to the Latency screen and PingFinder pings it on a schedule, charting minimum, average, maximum, jitter and packet loss, and logging when it drops off the network and comes back.

What you can scan

A subnet (192.168.1.0/24), a range (10.0.0.10-50), a single address, or any comma-separated mix of those. A run is capped at 65,536 addresses.

How devices are found

Three methods run together, because no single one sees everything:

ICMP echo over an unprivileged datagram socket — the same request ping sends.
A TCP connect probe for devices that ignore ping, which many Windows PCs, printers and IoT devices do. Turn it off in Settings if you want a quieter scan.
The neighbour cache your device already keeps for the local network.

Names come from reverse DNS and Bonjour, vendors from the IEEE registry bundled with the app, and the operating system and device type are inferred from TTL, open ports, service banners and the vendor.

Differences between Mac, iPhone and iPad

Hardware (MAC) address and vendor are shown on the Mac only. iOS does not let apps read the network's address table, so those fields say so rather than showing a blank. Everything else — discovery, latency, ports, Bonjour names and models, operating system guessing, traceroute and DNS — works on both.
The default gateway is read from the routing table on the Mac. On iPhone and iPad the first host in the subnet is assumed instead.

Common questions

The scan finds nothing — check that local network permission was allowed (Settings › Privacy & Security › Local Network), and that the address range matches the network you are on. PingFinder reports the error rather than appearing to hang.
A device I know about is missing — some devices answer neither ping nor the ports being probed. Turn on Also try TCP in Settings, widen the port set, or raise the ping timeout for a slow or busy network.
Why does a device show no name? — it has no reverse DNS entry and does not advertise itself over Bonjour. Give it your own name; PingFinder remembers it.
Latency looked higher during a big scan — a sweep sends many pings at once and the network queues them. The Latency screen pings one host at a time and is the accurate measure.
Does it support IPv6? — not yet. PingFinder scans IPv4 networks.
Where are my scans kept? — in the app's own iCloud container, so they follow you between your Mac, iPhone and iPad. If iCloud is unavailable everything is saved on the device instead, and the app says so rather than losing anything quietly.
Can I get the results out? — export any set of results as CSV or JSON from the share button.

Get help

Contact us via the form at outwest.ai and mention PingFinder — include your macOS or iOS version, the address range you scanned, and anything the app reported.

Privacy

PingFinder collects nothing — read the full privacy policy.