macOS menu bar utility

56k Screech

Dial-up energy for your Wi-Fi._

A retro internet manager for the macOS menu bar. Connecting is a deliberate act β€” click to dial in, click to hang up. No silent syncs, no background noise, no Wi-Fi you forgot was on.

View on GitHub View on PyPI
56k Screech menu bar dropdown showing an active connection: duration, speed, data transferred, and tracked session cost.

Why it's different

Not another background app.

πŸ“‘

Wi-Fi, actually controlled

When you're not connected through Screech, Wi-Fi is off. Full stop. No silent background syncs, no surprise radio chatter.

πŸ”Š

The dial-up ritual

Connecting plays an authentic dial-up handshake β€” the sound your brain still remembers. It's not a sound effect, it's a ceremony.

πŸ’°

Know what it's costing you

Set a currency and a price per hour, like the ISPs that billed by the minute back in the day. Screech tracks a running "cost" per session just for the nostalgia β€” it's a tracker, not an invoice.

😴

Sleep-aware tracking

Close the lid and the clock pauses with it. Waking your Mac never inflates a session's tracked cost or fires an overdue alert out of nowhere.

πŸ””

A nudge before you forget

Set a time limit and get a Notification Center alert when you're still connected β€” with a one-tap Disconnect built right in.

A closer look

Everything's editable right from the menu β€” no separate preferences window to dig through.

56k Screech Settings panel showing currency, price per hour, modem sound and alert toggles, alert limit, and Wi-Fi interface picker.
Currency, price/hour, sound, alerts, Wi-Fi interface β€” all editable live.
56k Screech Stats panel showing usage totals for today, 7 days, 30 days, all time, and a list of recent sessions.
Today, 7 days, 30 days, all time, plus your last 5 sessions.

Get started

Install

Requires macOS and Python 3.11+.

$ pip install 56k-screech

Then run screech, or python -m screech.app if you skipped the entry point.

Prefer to build from source?

$ git clone https://github.com/muzzug/screech.git
$ cd screech
$ pip install -e .

View source on GitHub β†’