A native macOS serial terminal with a file server built in
A native macOS terminal for serial, Bluetooth LE, Telnet and RFC 2217 consoles — with a TFTP/HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/SFTP server built in for firmware. Adapters by name, real break signals, byte-exact logs. No account, no analytics, no cloud.
Hello Product Hunt 👋
I have spent the 2 monthsr building the terminal I wanted for a drawer of USB-to-serial adapters.
If you have ever configured a switch, a Wi-Fi access point, a UPS or an embedded board, you know the ritual: find the console cable, guess which /dev/cu.usbserial-something it turned into this time, and type a screen command with no scrollback, no logging and no way to send a break.
Then, when the box needs firmware, stand up a TFTP server, which on macOS means sudo and a launchd plist.
BaudBuddy is both halves of that in one native Mac app.
What it does
• Shows adapters by name and serial number, so a saved connection finds the same adapter after you have moved USB ports
• Serial, Bluetooth LE, raw TCP, Telnet and RFC 2217, the last one so port settings follow the session to a console server
• A file server on a folder you choose: TFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SFTP. Every request appears as it arrives, who asked, for what, what happened
• XMODEM, XMODEM-1K, YMODEM, ZMODEM • Session logs in readable text or byte-exact raw, a traffic inspector with a hex view, Modbus decoding, and numeric values plotted as they arrive
What is unusual about it:
It never lies to you. If your adapter cannot assert a break, it says so instead of faking one by transmitting data. It will not show a handshake line it has not actually read.
An upload that fails leaves the file that was already there untouched, every protocol writes beside the destination and moves the file into place only when it is whole.
And it is quiet. No account, no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporter, no cloud, no update ping.
It talks to the equipment you pointed it at and nothing else.
That matters when the site is a hospital and somebody in security is going to ask what your laptop is doing on their network. The privacy page says so in plain words rather than legal ones.
Native SwiftUI and AppKit, sandboxed, universal, macOS 14+, and localised into fourteen languages.
What I would love from you
If you work on consoles: tell me what it gets wrong. Bootloaders I have not tested against, adapters that behave strangely, a protocol you still need. That list is how 1.1 gets written.
If you do not: I am happy to talk about any of the decisions, why there is no Electron in it, why there is no account, or why a terminal emulator ended up shipping five file-transfer protocols and an SFTP server.
Nicolas
About BaudBuddy on Product Hunt
“A native macOS serial terminal with a file server built in”
BaudBuddy launched on Product Hunt on August 26th, 2026 and earned 82 upvotes and 2 comments, placing #22 on the daily leaderboard. A native macOS terminal for serial, Bluetooth LE, Telnet and RFC 2217 consoles — with a TFTP/HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/SFTP server built in for firmware. Adapters by name, real break signals, byte-exact logs. No account, no analytics, no cloud.
On the analytics side, BaudBuddy competes within Mac, Productivity and Developer Tools — topics that collectively have 1.3M followers on Product Hunt. The dashboard above tracks how BaudBuddy performed against the three products that launched closest to it on the same day.
Who hunted BaudBuddy?
BaudBuddy was hunted by Nicolas Maton. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
For a complete overview of BaudBuddy including community comment highlights and product details, visit the product overview.
Nicolas Maton