What is NSURLSessiond?

NSURLSessiond is a system process on macOS that handles network requests for various apps, including web browsing, file downloads, and more. It's part of the Foundation framework and is used by many built-in macOS apps and third-party apps.

Why is NSURLSessiond using high network bandwidth?

There are several reasons why NSURLSessiond might be using a large amount of network bandwidth, including:

1. Background downloads: If an app is downloading large files or updates in the background, it can consume a significant amount of network bandwidth.

2. Background data refreshing: Many apps have background refresh features that allow them to update their content even when you're not using them. This can consume a significant amount of network bandwidth.

3. Misconfigured or buggy apps: In some cases, apps may have bugs or be misconfigured in a way that causes them to use excessive network bandwidth.

4. Syncing with cloud services: Some apps may be syncing data with cloud services, which can consume a significant amount of network bandwidth.

5. Malware or viruses: In some cases, malware or viruses can cause high network bandwidth usage by sending data or making requests in the background.

How I found I had a problem?

I work remotely and that day I didn't have access to Wifi, so I turned on the Personal Hotspot on my iPhone which is more than enough to show up on our daily meetings, browse StackOverflow, answer some tickets, create PRs on GitHub... the usual dev work.

The network bandwidth monitor(from iStats Menu) was running crazy and pointing to NSURLSessiond as the culprit. Nothing alarming... until I noticed my iPhone was hot as hell! The charging stopped with the message "Charging On Hold. Charging will resume when iPhone returns to normal temperature."

How I found the solution?

So I had to make it stop. I started googling and tried a couple of suggestions, then a couple more... nothing... some people blaming the iOS Simulator, or suggesting some dark command line magic to stop NSURLSessiond from working correctly by blocking connections, killing it, and/or stopping it from loading(never ever copy/paste command line commands if you don't know what you are doing)

The solution was way simpler: it was the system downloading updates.

Just open the "System Preferences" -> "Software Update", then click "Advanced..." and disable "Download new updates when available"

This time I found a well-crafted layout thanks to this blog post but I needed a couple of modifications for coding. And this one is a keeper! So I uploaded it to my Github account: macOS Spanish Dvorak Layout

How to Install

Download the repository from the link above and move the file to /Library/Keyboard\ Layout/

Then select "Dvorak Spanish" from the keyboard layout dropdown menu.

How to change the bindings

Open the bundle file with Ukelele and set the keyboard type("View"->"Keyboard type") to "Aluminium Wireless" for Macbooks

My custom modifications:

• Switched ~ and ¢ so I can Option + 4 for ~
• Added \ instead of ≤ to Option + the button left to number 1

Paste

This is by far the number 1. Easy... copy everything you want to the clipboard and then whenever you want to paste just hit Cmd+Shift+V and everything is there. You can edit them before pasting and bookmark them, no need to go back and forth between different windows, and you can even search for old copies, never losing a reference again.

A clipboard manager is a MUST HAVE, even more so for programmers... we do some copy/pasting...

BetterTouchTool

I use this one to set up gestures to navigate between tabs(left and right), closing the current tab and opening a new one. I moved the 3-finger gestures to 4-finger ones and now I'm using 3-finger swipes on the browser, works like a charm. Up for a new tab, Down to close it, and left/right to move to another tab.

This is actually where I feel like I'm super slow when I'm not using my computer.

When I'm not programming I'm probably researching or reading something and moving between workspaces, windows or tabs feels like going to the supermarket in a foreign country.

iStat Menus

Not knowing what my computer is doing drives me crazy. I MUST have real-time information about network inbound/outbound, fan speed(CPU temp), and CPU usage at least. Sometimes a process runs wild or something hangs, I need to know what is happening!

With iStat Menus I can also check which program is downloading/uploading information and which ones are using the most CPU.

Bartender

I don't need to have all the icons sitting there all the time, they add a lot of noise to the screen. Just the system monitors, date/time, and new mail notifications. Then Bartender hides everything else. Now that Apple added the camera to the screen it reduced the real state for the tray icons, I like to keep it minimal and clean.

Yoink

This is my latest addition. I heard about Yoink a long time ago but never took the time to give it a try. Now I love it. "Drag and drop" without Yoink is a pain. I use it primarily for screenshots.

The concept is great, it creates a "staging" zone for everything you drag into it. Just drag whatever it is you want to copy/move and it will stay into Yoink's popup until you grab it from there later. Then after you focus on the window where you want to drop it just drag it from Yoink and that's it. It even does the trick for text selections. Pretty handful.

Bonus:

• SSH Proxy -> This is a gem. I'll dedicate a blog post later to this one
• Bitwarden -> Must have! but not macOS specific
• RayCast -> I'm not a power user so I can live with Spotlight
• iTerm2 -> If the terminal has Oh-My-Zsh it is good enough for me
• Fig -> Nice to have
• Keka -> Easily replaceable
• Airmail -> Just better than keeping a Gmail tab
• Cyberduck -> Well rounded, but there are many alternatives available
• Meeter -> I like the notifications

We mainly use it to create a warm white low-light atmosphere in the living room, it starts automatically at sunset, and we don't need to touch it most of the time. Still, sometimes we need more light and we obviously use HomeAssistant and not the Shelly app to adjust it.

The PROBLEM

So my "problem" is that the slider on the default Light card(even the Mushroom one) handles the brightness value and in order to modify the white level you need to access the card options where you can also change the colors, apply effects, etc.

Solution, this is what I found so far

First and most important: I'm a HomeAssistant noob, I'm in love with it but by no means consider myself an expert or anything close.

Option 1: using a custom card

This is the one I'm currently using since I found this one looks way better than option 2 XD.

Install the slider-entity-row plugin through HACS. With it, you can specify the value that you want to control using the slider, in my case "attribute: white"

- type: custom:slider-entity-row
            entity: light.shellyrgbw2_fc9c65
            name: LED Living
            toggle: true
            attribute: white
            icon: mdi:led-strip

And it will look like this: Quite simple!

Option 2: using the default card

And here is where things get interesting, we can use a light template to create a new light that sets the Shelly RGBW2 values and reads from it. So whenever we modify the new template's brightness we do update the Shelly RGBW2 white level to that value and vice-versa... when we modify the Shelly RGBW2's white level we do update the new light brightness to reflect that change on the UI(since this is the one you will add to the dashboard)

This is how you do it, add the new light to your "configuration.yaml"

light:
  - platform: template
    lights:
      reverse_shelly:
        friendly_name: "Shelly White Control"
        turn_on:
          service: light.turn_on
          entity_id: light.shellyrgbw2_fc9c65
        turn_off:
          service: light.turn_off
          entity_id: light.shellyrgbw2_fc9c65
        set_level:
          service: light.turn_on
          data_template:
            rgbw_color: "{{ [0,0,0,brightness] }}"
            entity_id: light.shellyrgbw2_fc9c65
        level_template: "{{ state_attr('light.shellyrgbw2_fc9c65', 'rgbw_color')[3]|int }}"
        value_template: "{{ state_attr('light.shellyrgbw2_fc9c65', 'rgbw_color')[3]|int > 0 }}"

We named it "reverse_shelly" and we added a custom action to the set_level event, which reads the brightness on the card and uses it as the new white level value on the Shelly RGBW2.

Then we use the white value of the Shelly RGBW2 to update the card:

• value_template uses it to update the card as on/off
• level_template uses it to update the brightness slider value.

Now you can use the default Light card for "reverse_shelly" without installing any new addons!

BTW: I've tried to set the white value directly instead of using the rgbw_color but it didn't work 🤷🏻

I started using WireGuard recently to access my Home Assistant server from my phone. It worked like a charm until I found myself at a friend's house a couple of days ago and suddenly it stopped working as expected.

Problem

I tried to access my Homer dashboard at 192.168.1.x:8080 but it never responded... Home Assistant at 192.168.1.x:8123... nothing, everything started to fail even though the internet connection was working fine and the WireGuard connection was active.

Troubleshooting

The first thing I noticed was that the IP of the router(192.168.1.1) was indeed responding... only that it was not my router but my friend's. We were obviously under the same subnet range! And it seemed to be the root cause of the problem.

Solution

On a typical configuration you will have all network traffic forwarded to WireGuard using: (pay attention to AllowedIPs specifically)

[Peer]
PublicKey = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0
Endpoint = yourdomain.com:51820

Then we can specify an IP address so it will route traffic to the VPN instead of the local network. In my case, I just needed to add my Home Assistant server since all the services I need are under the same IP:

[Peer]
PublicKey = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0, 192.168.1.11/32
Endpoint = yourdomain.com:51820

Or if you want to route the whole range 192.168.1.0 - 192.168.1.255 you can use something like:

[Peer]
PublicKey = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0, ::/0, 192.168.1.0/24
Endpoint = yourdomain.com:51820

So this should fix your problem but the better solution would be configuring your network under some less common IP range to avoid the collision.

Useful links:

• Unofficial WireGuard Documentation - I found this while searching for possible solutions
• CIDR notation - How to write the IP addresses in the config file