macOS menu bar app
Switch DNS providers in one click.
DNS Button puts your resolver in the menu bar. Pick a provider, and the menu tells you what your Mac's DNS actually is — read back from the system every time, not remembered from the last change. If a VPN or anything else takes over, it says so.
Not released yet. DNS Button is finished and in testing, waiting on Apple to approve the developer account and the entitlement it needs for encrypted DNS. There is nothing to download today.
What it does
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Seven providers, no setup
Each with its filtering tiers where the operator publishes them — malware, ads, family, unfiltered.
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Real response-time testing
An actual DNS query for an uncacheable name, five samples, median written into each row.
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A switch, not a guess
One toggle at the top turns your resolver on and off. Off returns the Mac to whatever the network hands it.
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Your own resolvers
Add any address. A reverse lookup names the machine that answered, because an anycast address alone does not.
- AdGuard
- Cloudflare
- Control D
- NextDNS
- OpenDNS
- Quad9
What it does not do
No analytics, no accounts, no telemetry, no crash reporting. The app makes no network request of its own except the two you ask for: timing a resolver, and the DNS leak test. It installs no helper tool, no launch daemon and no background service. See the privacy policy, which describes the whole of it.
Free, and paid
Switching between the built-in providers, response-time testing and cache flushing are free. One purchase, once unlocks custom resolvers and the built-in DNS leak test on every Mac signed in to your Apple Account. No subscription.
Where it changes things
DNS Button sets the DNS servers on your active network services — the same setting System Settings exposes under Network → your service → Details → DNS. Nothing else. You can undo everything it has done without the app:
networksetup -setdnsservers Wi-Fi Empty
Empty is networksetup's own word for "go back to whatever the
network provides".