Little Snitch 6 Help

Getting Started

You may have heard people say that “getting started with Little Snitch may be tough” because there are so many connection alerts. And indeed: If you start with an empty rule set and choose alert mode, Little Snitch has to ask about every network connection an app or the operating system performs — and that’s a lot.

We at Objective Development are well aware of this, so we provide tools to help you get started:

As a first-time user, Little Snitch asks you whether to enable pre-configured rule groups and whether to use silent mode:

Welcome Window

You can change your mind at any time later, so choose what you feel is appropriate for you.

Silent mode

Silent mode is based on the following idea: Instead of interrupting you with connection alerts over and over again, Little Snitch just allows all connections and records which app connected to which server. Later, when you take your time to decide about rules, you open Network Monitor to review connections that happened so far and decide what to allow and what to deny.

The advantage of this approach is that you can decide yourself when to dedicate time to Little Snitch and you can create an optimal rule set, tailored to your needs. The obvious disadvantage is that you do not enjoy the full protection immediately. But to be honest: You have probably been using your Mac for years without even knowing about these connections. Waiting at least one more day should not be much of an issue.

For more information on silent mode read the section explaining operation modes in more detail.

Rule Groups

Another option for limiting the amount of connection alerts is to create generous allow-rules at installation time.

Little Snitch offers pre-configured groups of allow-rules:

For more information see the section explaining rule groups in more detail.

Blocklists

Blocklists are a quick way to add deny-rules for unwanted connections. They are immediately effective, even if you use silent mode and have not yet created any rules of your own.

Blocklists are maintained by volunteers and categorized by topic. There are blocklists specializing on ad servers, blocklists for servers tracking your behavior, for sites containing malware and so on. There are also blocklists of the type “one size fits all” which combine various topics.

In order to add blocklists, open Little Snitch and in the rules window click “Add Blocklists…”:

Add Blocklists

For more information see the section explaining blocklists in more detail.


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