License PortScope by Faini Made

macOS software to see what your USB-C cables, ports, and docks are actually doing, then prove it with real measurements, not guesses.

One license to test.

Every read-only tool (cable identity, port and device topology, power, bottleneck verdicts) is free forever. A single license unlocks Speed Test, the two-Mac Cable Tester, Cable Health, Wiggle Test, and Rename Display.

Product key will be sent in a separate mail

The Mac tool that proves what your cables, drives, and docks actually deliver.

Your cable says 40 Gbps. Your Mac says otherwise.

A USB-C cable can claim 40 Gbps, negotiate 10, and deliver 3 — because it's in a dock's slow port, or because the drive throttled, or because the cable was never what the box said it was. They all look identical from the outside, and macOS won't tell you which one you're living with.

PortScope tells you. It reads your cable's e-marker chip, shows the link your hardware actually negotiated, and then measures what really moves through it — keeping those three answers separate, because they're three different facts that get sold to you as one number.

A disk speed test that explains why a drive slows down

Most benchmarks hand you a burst number and stop. PortScope writes and reads a real file to measure true sustained throughput — then keeps analyzing the curve:

• Drive temperature, live, next to the speed graph. Watch heat and speed move together.

• See how big your SSD's fast cache really is. Consumer drives absorb writes into a quick pseudo-SLC region and then fall off a cliff. PortScope finds that fold-over and tells you roughly how much fast cache you have — and the slower speed waiting underneath it.

• Catch thermal throttling as it happens — and tell it apart from a full write cache. On a plain benchmark those two look identical. They aren't, and the fix for each is completely different.

Not just how fast, but how long it stays fast, and why it stops. Every run is saved with its temperature curve, and exports to CSV.

Test the cable, not the drive

The only honest way to measure a Thunderbolt or USB4 cable's real ceiling is to take the disk out of the equation entirely. PortScope streams data memory-to-memory between two Macs over the cable under test, no SSD, no filesystem, no enclosure capping the result. On a Thunderbolt port, the cable is the only thing left that can be the bottleneck.

Point it at the cable you think is 40 Gbps. Find out.

Catch the cable that only fails when it moves

• Wiggle Test — flex the cable at each end and along its length while PortScope samples link-error counters at 5 Hz, fast enough to catch a glitch that once-a-second polling sails right past. It watches every stage in the chain, so a fault localizes to a specific connector.

• Cable Health over time — tracks each cable's error counters across sessions, so a cable that's slowly dying shows itself before it strands you mid-shoot.

• Rename Display — give a monitor your own name, keyed to its EDID so it survives replugs. Never writes to the display.

What you get free — and what the license unlocks

PortScope is free to download and free to inspect with, forever. No trial timer on the free tools, no account, no ads.

Free — see everything Cable e-marker and PD identity · every port and its negotiated link · full device and dock topology · live per-device throughput · power four ways (adapter rating, cable ceiling, PD contract, live draw) · "why is this slow?" bottleneck verdict · dock bandwidth budget · display EDID and drive NVMe health · USB descriptors · USB/Thunderbolt and USB-PD reference tables with a plain-language glossary · menu bar quick view with one-click eject · shareable diagnostic report

Licensed

• Speed Test with cache sizing, thermal-throttle detection, history and CSV

• Two-Mac Cable Tester (memory-to-memory over the cable under test) -

• Cable Health over time 〰️ Wiggle Test for intermittent faults

• Rename Display

Your license

• Two Macs. Activate on up to two machines at once — desktop and laptop, studio and location.

• One full major version, for life. Buy during 1.x and every 1.x update is yours forever.

• No subscription. No expiry. Pay once.

• Move it whenever you want. Deactivate a Mac right from Settings to free that seat for a different machine.

• Works offline. A 14-day offline grace period means a bad hotel connection or an off-grid location never locks you out mid-job.

Running the two-Mac Cable Tester? Both Macs need an activation — that's two of your two seats, or a license on each machine.

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later)

• macOS 15 (Sequoia) or newer

Intel Macs aren't supported: their Thunderbolt controllers don't expose cable identity or power-delivery state through any public API. That's a hardware limitation, not a missing feature.

Privacy

PortScope runs entirely on your Mac. Nothing about your cables, drives, or hardware is ever sent anywhere, there's no analytics, no telemetry, and no account. The only time it goes online is to check your license and, if you ask it to, to look for an update.

Honest limitations

PortScope verifies identity and throughput. It is not a pin-continuity or electrical-safety tester, it's the companion to one, not a replacement. It reports what macOS and your hardware expose, and says plainly when something can't be known rather than guessing.

FAQ

Do I need a license to use PortScope? No. The identity and inspection tools are free forever. A license unlocks the five testing tools listed above.

Can I use it on my laptop and my desktop? Yes — one license activates on two Macs at once, and you can move a seat between machines any time from Settings.

What happens when version 2.0 comes out? Your license keeps working with every 1.x release, forever. A future 2.0 would be a separate, optional purchase — nothing you already have stops working.

Does the two-Mac Cable Tester need two licenses? Each Mac needs an activation. Since one license covers two Macs, a single license is enough if both Macs are yours.

Will it work on my Intel Mac? No. Apple Silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 15+ only.

Does it send my data anywhere? No. See Privacy above