Discovery for Mac is free software that you can use to see Bonjour services on the local network. The best part is that it can also display Bonjour services on Wide-Area Bonjour domains.
Previously Discovery was known as Bonjour browser but was discontinued by Lily Ballard as its design was not modern. Additionally, Bonjour browser was not regularly updated and became obsolete over time. Hence, Discovery for Mac is a sequel to Bonjour Browser.
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Contents
How to use Discovery for Mac
According to Apple, Bonjour is:
Bonjour, also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of devices and services on a local network using industry standard IP protocols. Bonjour makes it easy to discover, publish, and resolve network services with a sophisticated, easy-to-use programming interface that is accessible from Cocoa, Ruby, Python, and other languages.
Getting started with Discovery for Mac is pretty straightforward. You can download it from the App Store using the link provided at the end of this review. Before you download it, please note that it requires macOS 10.12 or later.
After you install it on your Mac, open it, and it will automatically detect all the Bonjour services on your network, as you can see in the screenshot below.
For previous macOS versions, you may download Bonjour Browser from here.
Discovery is also compatible with iOS 8.0 or later. Thus allowing you greater flexibility to keep a tab on what services are running, debug your latest program, and detect computers and devices to your network.
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Other features of Discovery – DNS-SD Browser
- Automatically detects all available local services and domains
- Displays additional information of each service such as domain name, TXT record, and IP address(es)
- Browses for Bonjour services
User Reviews of Discovery for Mac
Discovery has an excellent average rating of 4.9 out of 5 on the App Store.
Here is a top review from a user on App Store:
SImple application to do just what you’d expect
Browse the Zeroconf/Bonjour devices and services quickly and simply with a very standard UI that does what you’d expect. Love it. I think a context menu for right-clicking and copying the IP address would be appropriate, but you can still do it with Command-C, so it’s not a big deal. I’d like to see filtering options someday to filter on service, domain, metadata, IP/subnet, and browse by device… maybe a floating window that displays all metadata for a selected service. But I’m not going to take off any stars because this app does exactly what it says it will do predictably, and I appreciate that.
And here is a critical review of the software.
Discovery DNS SD Browser
Unreadable screen in Mojave version. Unable to see printer unless connected WiFi.
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Verdict
Discovery for Mac is a great utility that you can use to monitor background Bonjour services running locally and Wide-Area Bonjour domains. The user interface is modern and straightforward. All you have to do is install it from the App Store, and it will display all running Bonjour services to troubleshoot your application without any hassles.
Get this software from Mac App Store.
