Network Utility Is Gone from macOS — Here's What to Use Instead

If you recently searched your Mac for Network Utility and found nothing, you are not imagining things. Apple deprecated the app in macOS Catalina and removed it entirely in Big Sur. The little grey toolbox that generations of Mac users reached for to ping a server or trace a route is gone — and Apple never shipped a replacement.

The underlying tools still exist, though. This guide covers what Network Utility used to do, how to do each task today, and when a dedicated app makes more sense than the Terminal.

What Network Utility actually did

Network Utility was a thin graphical wrapper around classic command-line tools: interface info, ping, traceroute, DNS lookup, whois, finger, and a simple port scanner. Every one of those commands still ships with macOS — Apple only removed the friendly face in front of them.

The Terminal equivalents

Open Terminal and you can replicate every Network Utility tab:

• Ping: ping -c 5 example.com — check whether a host answers and how fast.
• Traceroute: traceroute example.com — see every hop between you and the destination.
• DNS lookup: dig example.com or nslookup example.com — resolve names to addresses and inspect records.
• Whois: whois example.com — domain registration details.
• Port scan: nc -zv example.com 80 443 — test whether specific ports accept connections.
• Interface info: ifconfig or ipconfig getifaddr en0 — your local addresses and interface state.

These work, and for one-off checks they are fine. But the Terminal approach has real friction: you have to remember flags, output is raw text you parse by eye, comparing runs means scrolling, and there is no way to watch anything continuously. If diagnosing network issues is something you do more than once a month, a purpose-built tool pays for itself quickly.

A native replacement: Netutilus

Netutilus is a modern network toolbox for the Mac — everything Network Utility did, rebuilt for current macOS and extended with the tools Apple never got around to adding.

• Ping, traceroute, DNS, whois, and port scanning in one window, with results presented as structured, readable output instead of a wall of text.
• Live monitoring: watch latency over time rather than a single snapshot — ideal for catching intermittent Wi-Fi drops that a one-shot ping misses.
• Local network scanning: discover devices on your network with their addresses and open ports, no arp spelunking required.
• History: previous runs stay available, so "was it this slow yesterday?" has an actual answer.

Common tasks, step by step

Is my internet down, or just this site?

1. Ping a reliable host such as 1.1.1.1. If that fails, the problem is your connection.
2. If the ping succeeds, run a DNS lookup on the site. A resolution failure points at DNS, not the site.
3. If DNS resolves, traceroute the site to see where along the path packets stop.

Why is my Wi-Fi randomly slow?

Single pings lie — intermittent problems hide between them. Run a continuous ping and watch the pattern: steady low latency with occasional multi-second spikes usually means interference or a congested channel; uniformly high latency points at the connection itself. This is where a monitoring view beats the Terminal decisively.

Is a port open on my server?

A port scan tells you in seconds whether a service is reachable — useful when you cannot tell if the firewall, the service, or the network is at fault. Scan the specific ports you expect to be open and compare against reality.

The bottom line

Network Utility is not coming back. For occasional checks, the Terminal commands above will serve you fine. For anything more — continuous monitoring, device discovery, readable results, history — Netutilus gives your Mac the network toolbox Apple removed, in a form the original never reached.