MiniWOL v3 - Wake On LAN (macOS)

Content Overview

• 1What is Wake-on-LAN ?
• 2Enabling Wake-on-LAN on your Network Device(s)
• 3miniWOL
• Download from the App Store
• Versions
• Features
• 4Getting Started
• Quick Start for the impatient (like myself)
• Brief tour with some screenshots
• Configuration
• Add a Device
• Automatically send WoL packets
• Advanced options
• Network Device specific Advanced Options
• General Advanced Options
• Manage Devices
• Copy Configuration files to other computers
• Uninstalling miniWOL

What is Wake-on-LAN ?

Wake-on-LAN, or WoL, is an Ethernet standard that allows you to “wake up” (or even power up) computers or network devices, and is originally intended for use in a local network. Please be aware that sending a WoL over the Internet typically does not work, and keep in mind that not all devices support Wake-on-LAN.

WoL is probably most commonly used to wake up a servers, just before access to these machines is needed – for example a media server, which can sleep all day long until you want to watch a movie, or a backup NAS that only needs to be awake when doing an actual backup.
There can be several motivations to do this; save on power, save on wear-and-tear of your equipment, keep things cool, etc.

WoL also requires the network card of this device to listen to traffic, even when the device is sleeping, in order to detect a “magic packet” being send to the device. While the NIC (network interface controller) is listening, a lot of traffic will pass that might not even be intended for this network connection, so just listening to network traffic would keep your network device awake even when you don’t want it to be awake.

Enabling Wake-on-LAN on your Network Device(s)

Before we can wake up a network device with WoL, you will need setup this device to do so.
Quite often you’d need to do some settings in the “BIOS” of your computer, and.or do some settings in the operating system as well.

Certain devices, like most NAS devices, make it a little easier by offering a simple “WoL ON/OFF” function.

Since this will be different for most devices, you can start by consult the manual of your device, or take a peek at my Wake-on-LAN article showing a few common devices and operating systems.

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ssh username@ip-address-mac "caffeinate -u -t 1 || exit 1;"

miniWOL

The intend of miniWOL is to have a small icon in your Mac’s Menubar, so you’re just a click away from sending a Wake-on-LAN magic packet to a defined server. All this without dealing with all the in-depth details. So an easy few clicks and you should be up and running.

Download from the App Store

You can download miniWOL at the Apple App Store.

Note that this is the first time that I’m providing an application through the Apple App Store, and not as a download from Tweaking4All.

The main reason for this is that this is an exercise for myself to see how complicated it is to place a Lazarus Pascal developed applications in the Apple App Store, and what the implications are for doing so. After all, Apple does have some requirements when it comes to safety, including but not limited to signing applications, setting etitlements, sandboxing etc.

An additional reason is to see if this would help me out with my website expenses, since sending me a cup of coffee does not seem to work … at all.
Advertisements are kind-a disgusting if you ask me, and have reached an all-time low as well, and referrals isn’t doing much either.

Note that I am super grateful for the few folks who did sent me a cup of coffee

As a little bonus for the small fee though; the often requested “auto update” is now fully automated (if you were to choose so) as well through the Apple App Store.

Versions

3.1.1 – Updated version with major bug fixes

• Bug fix: Unable to add miniWOL to login items – moved to SMAppServices as the old method has been deprecated – requires macOS 13+ (!)
• Bug fix: Unexpected selection behavior (bouncing text) in the list of network devices (on the left)
• Bug fix: Unexpected changing of menu labels in the list of network devices (on the left)
• Bug fix: WOL Magic Packets being not broadcasted at times
• Bug fix: Last edited field not saved when clicking Quit right after editing
• Update: Changed appearance  of the list of network devices, and did some minor cosmetic improvements
• Update: Improved IPv4 and MAC address validation
• Update: Replaced annoying popups, when entering invalid data, with small exclamation marks in front of the edit field(s)
• Update: Disabled auto sort, to avoid entries from jumping around when entering a new menu label
• Update: Ping button always visible (optional ping IP when MAC address cannot be determined)
• Update: New from scratch implementation of sending Wake On LAN packets

3.0.0 – Initial Apple App Store release

Features

miniWOL, as compact as it is, still packs a few neat features/options:

1. Automatically start miniWOL when you login to your Mac
2. At miniWOL startup, send WoL packets to devices that you configured as such
3. When your Mac resumes from sleep, send WoL to the devices you’ve set to do so
4. Execute a script or application once a network device successfully woke up through a WoL message
5. Quit miniWOL right away after sending WoL to devices at startup (and running scripts or applications)
6. Help find the MAC address of a network device based on its IP address, automatically or manually
7. Test your WoL configuration before using it
8. Do a PING to one of your devices to make sure the entered IP address can be reached
9. Test a script before using it
10. Use the default view with just a few options, or the more advanced view with more options

Getting Started

Quick Start for the impatient (like myself)

Adding a network device usually starts with at least these steps:

1. click the Add button,
2. enter the “Menu label” you’d like to see in the drop down menu,
3. Click the Known IPs button, and select the IP address of your device (or enter it manually).

Note:
The MAC address will be auto detected if you have not changed the default settings. This works when the IP address is in the so called ARP cache of your Mac – typically a device in your local network, that is powered on, and connected to the network.

Brief tour with some screenshots

miniWOL – Dropdown menu

miniWOL – Standard view

miniWOL – Advanced Options

miniWOL – Indicators

Indicators miniWOL

Indicator	What does it indicate?
	This Network Device is enabled
	This Network Device is disabled
	Send WoL when miniWOL starts (for example when your Mac starts)
	Send WoL when your Mac wakes up (Your Mac resumes from sleep)
	Run application of script after WoL
	A WoL task is running for this device (can include waiting for the device to be awake)

Configuration

After having installed miniWOL through the Apple App Store, it is time to configure one or more network devices.

Note that miniWOL will never appear in the Dock – only in the menubar.

Add a Device

Adding a network device usually starts with at least these steps:

1. click the Add button,
2. enter the “Menu label” you’d like to see in the drop down menu,
3. entering the “IP address” manually or with the Known IPs button, and
4. entering the “MAC address” manually or do an attempt to detect with the Detect from IP button.

Note that Known IPs, Detect from IP and “Try auto detect MAC address” (advanced option, which is enabled by default) depend on information miniWOL found in the so called ARP cache of your Mac.

This does works quite often very well, but it is not guaranteed that miniWOL will find every IP address or MAC address in your network.
Obviously, the targeted device needs to be powered on, and connected to the network.
Even then your Mac may not know about it and a quick Test Ping may help (ping only works if you entered an IP address).

Automatically send WoL packets

Now in the default window (not the advanced view) you can see two additional options you can check:

• Automatically send WoL when miniWOL starts

As you already guessed, this will send a WoL magic packet to this device when you start miniWOL. This will of course also work when miniWOL starts automatically when you Mac starts.

• Automatically send WoL when Mac Resumes

This option, will automatically send a WoL magic packet to this device when your Mac wakes up or Resumes from sleep (assuming you have miniWOL running of course).

Advanced options

Next to the Quit button, you will see a checkbox where you can enable or disable “Show advanced options“.

Most user may not have a much use for the advanced options, or will set it only once, and hiding the advanced options will result in a much calmer window to look at.
Keep in mind though that advanced options remain active/functioning, even when hidden.

Network Device specific Advanced Options

The only network device specific advanced option is the option to “Execute script after WoL” which allows a script or applications to be executed after a network device woke up based on a WoL packet being sent by miniWOL.

This is how this works:

1. miniWOL send a WoL magic packet to the device
2. miniWOL will wait for a bit, max 30 seconds, to see if the device did wake up, based on pinging the device
3. If the device is online, then  miniWOL will wait a number of seconds (“Execution delay“) to run the script or application.

Keep in mind that usually, a network device has an active network connection reasonably quick after having received a WoL packet.
However, the operating system of that device may need more time to become responsive.

As an example:
My NAS replies to a ping in a matter of seconds after waking up from sleep, and about 10 seconds more when powering on.
The OS however takes a minutes or so when waking up from sleep, and when powering on it even takes several minutes.

So this can either be a shell (Terminal) script, or a regular application, which you can select with the Select Script button.

The Test Script button allows you to test the script or application, which I strongly do recommend you do.
macOS may not permit all possible applications  or scripts to run due to sandbox and/or security limitations.

General Advanced Options

Advanced options does reveal a few advanced settings that affect miniWOL as a whole:

• “Try auto detect MAC address“, detect MAC address when an IP has been entered
• “Delete warnings“, show warnings when deleting device from the list
• “Show use hints“, show those little balloons explaining what certain items do
• “Notifications“, which makes miniWOL show notifications

Manage Devices

In the list of Network Devices (on the right), you can manage your device.
Either Add, Sort, Move them up   or down  , Delete a selected device or Clear the entire list.

Note that instead of removing a device, you can also simply disable them.
This way you have the info handy in case you need it in the future.

A device can be enabled/disabled using the toggle button, to the left of the device name in the list of Network Devices, or with the checkbox “Enabled” next to the Menu Label in the device details. A disabled device will be ignored in any automatic features, and will not be shown in the menu.

Copy Configuration files to other computers

To copy your settings from one Mac to another, we have to keep in mind that the application is distributed through the Apple App Store, and that the application is sandboxed. This means that the settings file can be found in a somewhat awkward location:

~/Library/Containers/com.Tweaking4All.miniWOL/Data/Library/Preferences/com.tweaking4all.miniWOL.ini

This location will have been created after you ran miniWOL at least one time on the Mac you’re looking at. So make sure to run miniWOL first.
Close the application on both computers and copy this file.
Make sure miniWOL is not running when copying the ini file.

Uninstalling miniWOL

Since this is an Apple App Store application without any weird things, you can simply drag miniWOL to the trashcan.

If you want to make sure everything has been removed, make sure to see if this directory i gone as well:

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~/Library/Containers/com.Tweaking4All.miniWOL