MacDNA

Product documentation

Use MacDNA with confidence.

A concise guide to onboarding, interpreting findings, managing a license, and sharing diagnostics without giving away more than you intend.

Quick start

  1. Download the signed DMG from the official release page after it becomes available.
  2. Move MacDNA to Applications and open it.
  3. Review the privacy onboarding before enabling detailed monitoring.
  4. Activate with a license key, or use the documented offline activation flow.
  5. Leave MacDNA running long enough to learn a useful personal baseline.

Early findings may have lower confidence. That is expected while the baseline is still developing.

In Settings → Monitoring, enable or pause automatic refresh, choose Basic, Balanced, Detailed, or a validated 5-second to 5-minute Custom cadence, and use Refresh Now at any time. Low Power Mode and inactive windows automatically reduce sampling work.

Resource workspaces

CPU combines total, user, system, per-core, load-average, and thermal-state readings with current application families. Memory shows the labeled VM-counter pressure proxy, available, wired, compressed, cached, and swap values. Storage presents startup-volume capacity and system-wide read/write throughput. Network retains aggregate receive/send history across active interfaces. Battery shows charge, charging state, runtime estimate, power flow, health, and drain when macOS publishes them.

MacDNA does not relabel unsupported per-app network, disk, or power attribution. Unsupported or temporarily missing readings remain visibly unavailable.

Read a finding

Pulse has four states: Optimal, Elevated, Strained, and Critical. A state is paired with evidence, a confidence level, and a cautious next step. Use Timeline’s Context Lens or App DNA to inspect application activity separately.

"Observed nearby" is not the same as "caused by." MacDNA preserves that distinction anywhere the available evidence cannot establish causation.

Privacy controls

Monitoring history, app activity, process names, paths, ports, and notes remain on your Mac. No analytics or crash-upload service is integrated. Before saving a report, choose a redaction profile and review the exact output.

Read the complete privacy policy.

License and devices

A one-time personal lifetime license supports up to three personally owned Macs and includes application updates throughout MacDNA’s supported commercial lifetime. Verified purchases 1–100 are $5 USD, 101–200 are $9 USD, and 201 onward are $21 USD; every tier receives the complete product. Use device management to transfer activations, license recovery if the key is lost, or offline activation for a disconnected Mac.

Developer mode

Developer Mode runs the built-in lsof tool on demand to list TCP listeners visible to the current user, attach the owning process working directory when available, and group listeners by project. It shows the binding and exact PID before offering a confirmed Quit or Force Quit action; it does not guess whether a process is idle or safe to stop.

Prepare a support request

Include the Mac model, macOS version, MacDNA version, and the smallest redacted incident export that demonstrates the issue. Never send the full local monitoring database. See support guidance for the current contact status.