netdev

Cross-platform library for enumerating network interfaces with metadata.
netdev provides a unified API for discovering local network interfaces and retrieving commonly used metadata across platforms.

Key Features

• Enumerate all available network interfaces
• Detect the default network interface
• Retrieve interface metadata:
  • Interface type
  • MAC address
  • IPv4 / IPv6 addresses and prefixes
  • MTU, flags, operational state, etc...
• Native traffic statistics (RX/TX bytes) for each interface
• Designed for cross-platform

See the Interface struct documentation for more details.

Supported platforms

• Linux
• macOS
• Windows
• Android
• iOS
• BSDs

Usage

Add netdev to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
netdev = "0.47"

For more details, see examples or doc.

Feature flags

• gateway (default)
  • Enables default interface and default gateway helpers.
• apple-system-configuration-extra (default)
  • Enables additional objc2-system-configuration dependency bindings on macOS.
  • Currently, this flag does not change metadata collection: macOS reads interface names and DHCP hints from SystemConfiguration plist files, with a basic SystemConfiguration API fallback, regardless of this flag. It has no effect on iOS.
• android-extra (default)
  • Enables deeper Android metadata enrichment using Android platform APIs through JNI bindings.
  • On Android, this can add metadata such as traffic stats, DNS servers, DHCP hints, and Wi-Fi link speed when the app provides the required Android context and permissions.
• apple-wifi-extra
  • Enables macOS Wi-Fi transmit-speed collection through CoreWLAN.
  • This feature is disabled by default because CoreWLAN metadata collection may perform synchronous IPC during interface enumeration.

To disable default feature flags while keeping gateway helpers (macOS metadata collection remains enabled):

[dependencies]
netdev = { version = "0.47", default-features = false, features = ["gateway"] }

Apple behavior

netdev links SystemConfiguration.framework automatically on macOS through its build script. If your app is ultimately linked by Xcode, you may still need to add SystemConfiguration.framework to the app target manually. On iOS, netdev uses only public APIs: getifaddrs, routing sysctls, Network.framework and libresolv.

macOS Wi-Fi transmit-speed collection is disabled by default. To enable it, opt in to the apple-wifi-extra feature:

[dependencies]
netdev = { version = "0.47", features = ["apple-wifi-extra"] }

This uses CoreWLAN, whose metadata lookup may perform synchronous IPC while interfaces are being enumerated.

Android behavior

If you want Android-specific values such as DNS servers, DHCP hints, or Wi-Fi link speed, your app may still need to initialize the Android context for Rust and declare Android permissions such as ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE and ACCESS_WIFI_STATE.

Project History

This crate was originally published as default-net and was later rebranded to netdev by the author for future expansion, clearer naming, and long-term maintenance.

Tested on

• Linux
  • Ubuntu
    • 24.04.5
    • 22.04
    • 21.10
    • 20.04
    • 18.04
  • Kali
    • 2024.2
    • 2023.2
    • 2022.1
    • 2021.1
  • Arch
    • 2024.05.01
• macOS (Apple Silicon)
  • 26.3.1
  • 14.7.6
• macOS (Intel)
  • 13.4.1
• Windows
  • 11 25H2 26200.9711
  • 11 24H2 26100.6584
• FreeBSD
  • 14.4
• OpenBSD
  • 7.9
• NetBSD
  • 10.1
• Android (arm64)
  • 17
  • 16
• Android (x86_64)
  • 16
• iOS
  • 26.6.2
  • 18.6.2