MacOS – How to run Wireshark in the background without the GUI

command linemacoswindow-managerx11

I am trying to run Wireshark on Mac OS X in the background. I installed the command line utilities, and so I am able to start Wireshark and capture packets using the command line.

The only thing I want now is to run it in the background, without the X11 icon in the Dock or seeing Wireshark's window. I believe it is possible, but can't find anything in Wireshark's docs.

Maybe another approach would be to hide the icon?

If anybody has already did this or has an idea…

Best Answer

As initially seen here:

As far as I remember TShark comes with all distributions of Wireshark. This runs from the command line. The documentation for it is here: http://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages/tshark.html

And there's some examples on how to use it here: http://www.codealias.info/technotes/the_tshark_capture_and_filter_example_page

David Hewitt