NetMutePress kit
NetMute press kit
Everything on this page is cleared for use in articles, videos and newsletters. No embargo, no approval, no attribution beyond naming the app. If you need something that is not here, ask and you will have it the same day.
Last updated 10 September 2026
Every screenshot at full resolution in light and dark, the app icon, and this kit as plain text.
At a glance
- Product
- NetMute
- What it is
- A per-app firewall and tracker blocker for the Mac, run from the menu bar.
- Maker
- Balane GmbH, Munich, Germany. Built by one person, Jonas Höttler.
- Requirements
- macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later.
- Version
- 2.3.4
- Price
- Free to download. NetMute Pro is a one-time purchase: $17.99 in the Mac App Store, or €14.99 as a direct licence with an invoice. Five and ten seat licences exist. No subscription, no account.
- Availability
- Mac App Store worldwide, and directly from netmute.com with a licence key.
- Languages
- 47
- Press contact
- j@hoettler.com
Descriptions, ready to paste
Four lengths, so nothing has to be rewritten to fit. Each one is the product as it actually ships.
One line98
NetMute is a menu bar firewall for the Mac: see what every app sends, and cut it off in one click.
Short326
NetMute is a firewall for the Mac that works per app. It lists every program talking to the internet, names the servers behind each connection, and lets you cut any of them off from the menu bar. Its Tracker Shield blocks known tracking domains system-wide. Free to download, with a one-time purchase for the full feature set.
Long817
NetMute is a per-app firewall and tracker blocker for the Mac. It sits in the menu bar and answers a question macOS itself does not: which program is talking to whom, right now, and how much. Every connection is resolved to a readable service name, sorted by what it is after (advertising, analytics, telemetry, fingerprinting, or a function the app genuinely needs), and can be blocked with one switch. NetMute also builds a picture over time: traffic per app, per day and per network, a privacy grade per app, and a map of the countries a Mac talks to. Analysis happens on the Mac, and nothing about the traffic is uploaded unless a clearly marked option is switched on. NetMute is free to download; NetMute Pro is a one-time in-app purchase with no subscription and no account. It is made by Balane GmbH in Munich.
Boilerplate174
Balane GmbH is a software company in Munich, Germany, founded by Jonas Höttler. It builds Mac and iOS software, of which NetMute is the largest. Press contact: j@hoettler.com
Numbers you can quote, and where they come from
Every figure here has a source and a date. Where a number depends on the machine it was measured on, that is said.
381
Curated tracker domains blocked out of the box
The list shipped inside the app holds 584 entries, 381 of them classified as tracking. A test pins the number, so it cannot drift unnoticed.
50
Of those, what the free version blocks: the most active ones
The free limit is a constant in the app, not a marketing figure.
37,847
Domains on the block list with the optional public lists switched on
Hagezi plus EasyPrivacy at the Balanced level, counted 4 September 2026. This number moves with the lists.
47
Languages the app ships in
1,220 translated strings per language, checked by a test that fails if one language is missing a key.
346 / 75 / 1
Tracker names actually blocked in Safari, Chrome and Brave on one Mac
Measured 9 September 2026 against real block records. The gap is explained below, not hidden.
0
Bytes of traffic content NetMute can read
It sees names, sizes and destinations. Never payloads.
Three stories in here
If you are looking for the angle rather than the feature list, these are the three that hold up to scrutiny.
The consent nobody read
Run NetMute on an ordinary, up-to-date Mac and the first screen is a receipt: a music app posting to its telemetry endpoint, an ad network, a fingerprinting service that recognises the device with no login involved. On the test Mac, 61 companies across 43 apps in 30 days. None of it is a breach. All of it was agreed to.
A firewall for people who have never heard of DNS
The established Mac firewalls ask the user to rule on individual connections, which is a question most people cannot answer. NetMute sorts connections by what they are after and writes the answer in words: advertising, analytics, telemetry, fingerprinting, or something the app genuinely needs. The design test in every release is the same: can this be decided without knowing what a domain is?
The blocker that names the places it fails
Blocking by hostname works wherever the name is visible. In a browser that resolves names over its own encrypted DNS, it is not visible. Measured on one Mac on 9 September 2026: 346 blocked names in Safari, 75 in Chrome, one in Brave. That gap is printed in this kit and stated in the app, because a privacy tool that overstates its reach is the failure mode it exists to fix.
Screenshots
Click any picture for the full-resolution file. Light and dark versions of each are in the ZIP.
Ready-made lead images
The six App Store frames, 2880 by 1800, headline baked in. Useful when a piece needs one picture that carries itself.
Icon and name
- NetMute is one word, with a capital N and a capital M. Not Netmute, not Net Mute.
- The paid tier is called NetMute Pro. There is no Premium and no subscription.
- The icon may be scaled and placed on any background. Please do not recolour it, stretch it or add effects.
- Balane GmbH is the company, NetMute is the product. Either is fine in a byline; they are not interchangeable.
Where NetMute does and does not reach
The most useful part of a press kit is the part a marketing page leaves out. All of this is checkable.
It blocks by name, not by content
NetMute reads a connection's destination, its size and its timing. It never reads what is inside, and it could not: the traffic is encrypted, and NetMute does not attempt to break that.
Browsers that do their own encrypted DNS
NetMute learns a server's name from the Mac's own name resolution. Safari is covered twice, through the network filter and through a Safari extension. Chrome, Edge and Arc are covered through NetMute's DNS proxy. A browser that resolves names over its own encrypted DNS, which Brave does by default, hides the name, and there the tracker blocking does not bite.
Two things do leave the Mac, and both are off by default
The optional public block lists are downloaded from their maintainers, which reveals an IP address to them like any other web request. And an unknown tracker name can be reported back to us, with explicit consent for each single report, carrying the name and nothing about the person who sent it.
It is not a VPN and not an antivirus
NetMute routes no traffic anywhere, hides no address and scans no files. It decides which connections a Mac is allowed to make.
macOS 26 and later only
It relies on system extensions that only current macOS provides. Older systems are not supported, and that is not going to change.
About the maker
NetMute is built by Jonas Höttler at Balane GmbH in Munich. It is a one person product: the same person writes the code, the release notes and the support replies, which is why the app's About screen carries his inbox.
A blocked page that simply hangs teaches a user nothing except that the tool is broken. Most of the work in NetMute is not the blocking. It is saying, in a sentence anyone can read, what was blocked and what to do about it.
Review copy
The app is free, so it needs no code. For NetMute Pro, a mail naming the outlet gets a Mac App Store promo code, usually the same day. No conditions attached: we do not ask to see the piece first.
Contact
German or English, whichever is easier. Interview requests, a specific screenshot, a number checked before you print it: all welcome.
j@hoettler.com