I introduced Mac OS X ADS-B decoding software 5 years ago, At that time, there wasn’t any particularly good software on Mac, so I didn’t continue using it. Today, I discovered a pretty decent piece of software called Max Planes. After testing it, I felt it works quite well, So here is an introduction.

Max Planes

Watch planes on macOS, save recordings, watch replays and share them with friends. All without the internet. Use a USB RTL-SDR or "DTB Tuner" to see nearby planes.

Installation instructions are as follows 1 Download Max Planes from the App Store

2 Download the ADS-B server software dump1090-mac-app.app from github mxswd/dump1090-mac-app The URL for the current version is here

3 Plug the Mini DVB-T Stick Mini digital TV Stick into the MacBook Pro

4 Launch Dump1090 Mac Server to decode the data received by the digital TV Stick

5 Launch Max Planes, set the connection host to localhost, and set the port to the default 3005. Max Planes will then start receiving the aircraft ADS-B signals sent by dump1090

6 After a while, you can see the collected aircraft data displayed on the map

Since this was a test, I only used a small antenna, so the received signals were relatively few. However, it proves that Max Planes is a nice piece of software, and I can continue to use it in the future.