Poliwave

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Poliwave is a Tauri + Rust desktop WiFi signal analyzer MVP.

Features

• Scan nearby WiFi networks from the Rust backend.
• Sort networks by RSSI signal strength.
• Detect 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands from channel or frequency.
• Show how many nearby WiFi BSSIDs were observed on each channel without treating the count as actual channel load.
• Track RSSI history in the frontend and render a curve for the selected BSSID.
• Describe the current connection using its signal strength and security type, with a shortcut to system WiFi settings when needed.
• Diagnose WiFi, default gateway, DNS, and internet connectivity on demand, including latency and packet loss when available.
• Distinguish location permission, disabled WiFi, missing-adapter, and generic scan failures, with guided recovery actions.

Runtime scanning sources

Poliwave currently supports macOS and Windows:

• macOS: CoreWLAN, with a Location Services prompt so macOS can return real SSIDs; legacy system commands are retained as a fallback
• Windows: netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid

When opened in a normal browser during development, the app uses demo data so the UI can be tested without Tauri.

Diagnostics and privacy

Nearby WiFi scan results stay in local memory and are never uploaded. Only when the user explicitly runs the one-click diagnostic does Poliwave make standard DNS, ICMP, and TCP connectivity probes. The current targets are example.com, 1.1.1.1, and 223.5.5.5. These probes do not upload scan results or user content, and TCP reachability is used when ICMP is unavailable.

Local build

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+ and npm
• Rust stable toolchain with Cargo
• macOS Tauri prerequisites: Xcode Command Line Tools

On macOS, install Rust with:

brew install rustup
brew link --force rustup
rustup toolchain install stable
rustup default stable

Install frontend dependencies:

npm install

Development

Browser-only UI development, uses demo WiFi data:

npm run dev

Desktop development, uses the real Rust WiFi scanner:

npm run tauri:dev

Build frontend only

npm run build

Output:

dist/

Build macOS app

npm run tauri:build

Output:

src-tauri/target/release/bundle/macos/Poliwave.app

To share the macOS app as a zip:

cd src-tauri/target/release/bundle/macos
ditto -c -k --sequesterRsrc --keepParent "Poliwave.app" "Poliwave.zip"

Build Windows x64 package from macOS

This project can cross-compile a Windows x64 .exe from macOS with cargo-xwin.

Install the extra tools once:

rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
brew install llvm nsis
cargo install cargo-xwin

Build the Windows executable:

PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm/bin:$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH" \
  npm run tauri -- build --runner cargo-xwin --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc --ci

Output:

src-tauri/target/x86_64-pc-windows-msvc/release/poliwave.exe

Create the shareable Windows zip:

mkdir -p release/windows-x64
cp src-tauri/target/x86_64-pc-windows-msvc/release/poliwave.exe "release/windows-x64/Poliwave.exe"
COPYFILE_DISABLE=1 LC_ALL=C LANG=C \
  sh -c 'cd release && zip -X -r "Poliwave-Windows-x64.zip" windows-x64'

Output:

release/Poliwave-Windows-x64.zip

The Windows build is unsigned. SmartScreen may warn on first launch.