📵 56k Screech

Retro dial-up internet manager for the macOS menu bar — because connecting to the internet should be a deliberate act, not an automatic reflex.

What it does

56k Screech lives in the menu bar and actually controls your Mac's Wi-Fi. When the internet isn't turned on via DialUp, it simply doesn't work. No silent syncs, no background notifications, no cloud quietly refreshing without your knowledge.

And of course — connecting is accompanied by an authentic dial-up sound ritual. 📟

56k Screech is menu-bar-only: it never shows a Dock icon or a Cmd+Tab entry.

Features

The menu bar icon itself reflects connection state: 📵 offline, 📡 connecting, 📶 connected (idle), 🌐 connected (actively transferring data).

Installation

pip

pip install 56k-screech

From source

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

Running

screech
# or, without the installed entry point:
python -m screech.app

The 📵 icon appears in the menu bar. Click → "Connect to internet".

The modem sound plays in full before Wi-Fi actually turns on — that's the ritual, not a hang. Expect a several-second delay between clicking Connect and the radio (and the status row) actually going live.

Automatic startup (LaunchAgent)

screech install-launchagent

Uninstall:

screech uninstall-launchagent

Configuration

Most settings are edited live from the app itself — click the Settings section in the menu to expand it:

• Currency and Price/hour — used to compute the cost shown live and recorded per session
• Modem sound — turn the dial-up handshake on/off
• Alerts — toggle on/off, plus a Limit (min) for how often you get a Notification Center reminder while connected
• Wi-Fi Interface — pick the right Wi-Fi device from a submenu populated from networksetup -listallhardwareports, instead of editing code; this is the fix if 56k Screech "does nothing" (or reports it couldn't turn Wi-Fi on) when you click Connect

Alerts use macOS Notification Center, so the first time you connect you'll be asked to grant 56k Screech permission under System Settings → Notifications. Each alert plays the standard notification chime — if you'd rather it stayed silent, turn off the sound for 56k Screech there.

Settings are persisted to:

~/Library/Application Support/56k Screech/config.json

Session history (used for the Stats section) is stored in:

~/Library/Application Support/56k Screech/sessions.db

A Reset Stats… item at the bottom of the Stats section permanently erases all recorded session history.

License

MIT © Ondřej "Muzzug" Kadlec