What can this USB-C cable actually do?
A small macOS menu bar app that tells you, in plain English, what each USB-C cable plugged into your Mac can actually do, and why your Mac might be charging slowly.
USB-C hides a lot under one connector. Anything from a USB 2.0 charge-only cable to a 240W / 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 4 cable, all looking identical in your drawer. macOS already exposes the relevant info via IOKit; WhatCable surfaces it as a friendly menu bar popover.
Per port, in plain English:
- At-a-glance headline — Thunderbolt / USB4, USB device, Charging only, Slow USB / charge-only cable, Nothing connected
- Charging diagnostic — when something's plugged in, a banner identifies the bottleneck:
- "Cable is limiting charging speed" (cable rated below the charger)
- "Charging at 30W (charger can do up to 96W)" (Mac is asking for less, e.g. battery near full)
- "Charging well at 96W" (everything matches)
- Cable e-marker info — the cable's actual speed (USB 2.0, 5 / 10 / 20 / 40 / 80 Gbps), current rating (3 A / 5 A → up to 60W / 100W / 240W), and the chip's vendor
- Charger PDO list — every voltage profile the charger advertises (5V / 9V / 12V / 15V / 20V…) with the currently negotiated profile highlighted in real time
- Connected device identity — vendor name and product type, decoded from the PD Discover Identity response
- Active transports — USB 2 / USB 3 / Thunderbolt / DisplayPort
- "Show technical details" toggle revealing the underlying IOKit properties for engineers
Right-click the menu bar icon for Refresh, a Keep window open toggle (handy for screenshots and demos), About, and Quit.
Download the latest WhatCable.zip from the Releases page, unzip, and drag WhatCable.app to /Applications.
The app is universal (Apple silicon + Intel), signed with a Developer ID, and notarised by Apple — no Gatekeeper warnings.
Requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
WhatCable reads three families of IOKit services. No entitlements, no private APIs, no helper daemons:
| Service | What it gives us |
|---|---|
AppleHPMInterfaceType10/11 |
Per-port state: connection, transports, plug orientation, e-marker presence |
IOPortFeaturePowerSource |
Full PDO list from the connected source, with the live "winning" PDO |
IOPortTransportComponentCCUSBPDSOP |
PD Discover Identity VDOs for SOP (port partner) and SOP' (cable e-marker) |
Cable speed and power decoding follow the USB Power Delivery 3.x spec.
Requires Swift 5.9 (Xcode 15+).
Produces a universal dist/WhatCable.app (arm64 + x86_64) and dist/WhatCable.zip.
Modes:
| Configuration | Result |
|---|---|
No .env |
Ad-hoc signed. Works locally; Gatekeeper warns on other Macs. |
.env with DEVELOPER_ID |
Developer ID signed + hardened runtime. |
.env with DEVELOPER_ID + NOTARY_PROFILE |
Full notarisation + stapled ticket. Gatekeeper-clean for everyone. |
One-time setup for full notarisation:
# 1. Find your signing identity security find-identity -v -p codesigning # 2. Store notarytool credentials in the keychain xcrun notarytool store-credentials "WhatCable-notary" \ --apple-id "you@example.com" \ --team-id "ABCDE12345" \ --password "<app-specific-password>" # generate at appleid.apple.com # 3. Create your .env from the template cp .env.example .env # ...and fill in DEVELOPER_ID
- Cable e-marker info only appears for cables that carry one. Most USB-C cables under 60 W are unmarked. Any Thunderbolt / USB4 cable, any 5 A / 100 W+ cable, and most quality data cables will be e-marked.
- PD spec coverage: the decoder targets PD 3.0 / 3.1. PD 3.2 EPR variants may need tweaks once we see real data.
- Vendor name lookup is bundled but not exhaustive — common cable, charger, hub, dock, and storage vendors are recognised; others fall back to the hex VID.
- macOS only. iOS sandboxing makes USB-C e-marker access much harder.
- Not on the App Store. App Sandbox blocks the IOKit reads we depend on.
Issues and PRs welcome. The code is small and tries to stay readable — start at Sources/WhatCable/ContentView.swift for the UI, PortSummary.swift for the plain-English logic, or PDVDO.swift for the bit-twiddling.
Built by Darryl Morley.
Inspired by every time someone has asked "is this cable any good?".