Privacy preferences

By default, TripMode records statistics for all traffic to enable you to trace application activy and pinpoint the most consuming apps. Since version 3, it does so at the domain or website level, allowing a finer grained view of your traffic. Although TripMode never records your actual activity on a given website (by design and due to technical limitations on any website that uses HTTPS), in some cases you may want to delete websites names from history, or even decide to never record a specific domain name.

Privacy preferences offer several controls over this process.

Important note: TripMode’s history database is not encrypted by itself, meaning that anyone with your session password can read it after loggin into your session (by launching TripMode or directly accessing the file). If you use FileVault which is a generally recommended practice, the database will be encrypted on disk as all other user data and locked away once you close your user session. The shadowed domains list is encrypted with a TripMode-specific key stored in your Keychain so that it cannot be read without unlocking it with your password.

Unlock privacy preferences

To avoid unwanted prying eyes from looking at your settings, for example in the event your computer has been left unlocked and unattended for a few minutes, privacy settings are locked with your session password.

Locked privacy preferences

If you computer supports TouchID as a password replacement, clicking the unlock button will present the appropriate prompt. If you Apple Watch has been setup to unlock your computer, it is also supported as a method to unlock privacy preferences.

In any case, a password fallback is provided if necessary.

Privacy settings

The privacy settings window is split into a known domains panel and a shadowed domains panel.

Privacy preferences

Known domains

Known domains lists all domains currently in TripMode’s history database. New domains are added as applications access them and older domains are purged as they fall out of the retention time or are coalesced into the ‘others’ category when they represent too little traffic to be kept long term. This panel allows deleting one or several domains history, or select domains to be shadowed.

Search bar Allows searching for a specific domain or pattern in the list
Domain list By default, lists all known domains, unless filtered through the search predicate from the search bar. Domains are listed hierarchically, with sub-domains as children of their top-level domain parent. For example, www.tripmode.ch will appear as a child of the tripmode.ch top-domain.
Refresh button To avoid unwanted interruptions as TripMode monitors new domains, the domain list is not refreshed automatically after it is initially loaded. Click this button to force a refresh and see the latest domains. Note that new domains may take up to 1 minute to show up due to the sampling interval.
Erase domain history Immediately erases the selected domains. Be aware that if a domain is currently tranferring data, its history will be erased but the new traffic will still show up. To prevent further recording, shadow the domain (see below)
Move domain to shadowed list Erase the selected domains history and moves them to the second panel, which lists the shadowed domains. Those won’t be recorded in history anymore.

Shadowed domains

Shadowed domains are redacted in the main interface (they appear as a placeholder rectangle) and their history is always recorded only as coalesced into the ‘others’ category.

Shadowed domains in UI

This panel organization is very similar to the known domains panel.

Search bar Allows searching for a specific domain or pattern in the list
Domain list Lists all shadowed domains, unless filtered through the search predicate from the search bar
Delete button Removes the selected domains from the shadowed list so that their history can be recorded again

Domain shadowing operates with the following rules:

Note

Only known domains can be added to the shadow list. TripMode does not support adding arbitrary domains in its current version.