A new update for Connection Explorer is rolling out now that brings with it new features, performance improvements, as well as a few bug fixes.

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Updated Bandwidth panel with app icons

The app will automatically download the update but if you want to grab the latest release, you can open the application and click About where you will find the option to download the update.

With this release, attention was focused on the Firewall panel that was previously called blocked. On the panel, there are new controls for independently blocking inbound and outbound connections for each application as well as sparklines showing the activity for a particular app during the past 24 hours.

The goal with this update, along with version .8, is to provide a better look at per-app activity and control. When coupled with the Bandwidth panel, the Firewall panel makes it easy to block problematic applications, and the Bandwidth panel helps you understand where your data is flowing to on a per connection basis.

New Firewall panel with updated controls and sparklines

Also new across the entire application are icon updates. Gone are the placeholder icons and now each line item will show the respective app icon for easier visibility and there are also new loading animations as well.

And what good would an update be without a few bug fixes, especially those that have been reported by the community. There are several performance improvements to the caching and database lookups but most importantly, for non-English Windows installations, tracking of connections should be more reliable over multiple sessions.

Connection Explorer is the easiest way to see what you computer is doing and where your data is going. If you haven’t tried the app yet, you can learn more about it here and if you have any feedback or requests for new features, make sure to join the conversation as many of the updates in this release were driven by the community.