Catch the in-between state
Captive portals are not fully offline and not fully online. Up? gives that state its own warning so the menu bar answer matches what your apps are experiencing.
Captive portal detector
Connected to cafe Wi-Fi does not mean online.
Airport, hotel, train, and cafe Wi-Fi often connects before it lets you through. Up? tells you when your Mac is stuck behind a captive portal, so you stop blaming Slack, Git, or your browser and open the login page first.
For Mac users searching captive portal detector Mac, hotel Wi-Fi login not showing, cafe Wi-Fi connected no internet, or Mac captive portal.
What it checks
Wi-Fi connected is not the same as online.
Up? keeps the diagnosis short enough to read under pressure. The dot is the answer. The timeline is the proof.
Useful before the browser opens
Command-line tools, sync clients, and meeting apps fail poorly behind portals. Up? catches the block before those failures look mysterious.
Made for working between places
If you work from cafes, hotels, co-working spaces, and trains, you hit portal limbo often enough that it deserves a permanent signal.
When it pays for itself
The moments where guessing costs more than $9.
- Wi-Fi joins but every app still fails
- The login page does not pop up automatically
- You work from public networks often
- You need to know when the portal, not the app, is blocking you