SidecarBridge vs Network Hamster
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
SidecarBridge
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SidecarBridge turns your iPhone or iPad into a private local viewer and remote-control surface for your Mac. Pair once with the companion Mac app using its temporary 16-digit code or QR code. Reconnect with a saved trusted Mac over your local network or a nearby peer-to-peer link. FEATURES • Encrypted local sessions and remembered trusted devices • Hardware-encoded Mac screen streaming with quality and frame-rate controls • Touch and trackpad gestures for clicking, dragging and scrolling • On-screen controls and physical keyboard support, including Chinese/English input • Picture in Picture viewing where supported • A dedicated Files & transfers tab with connection controls and visible progress • Browse accessible Mac folders, see file/storage information, calculate folder sizes and download selected files or folders • Send files and whole folders to your Mac; folder transfers use ZIP archives PRIVACY AND REQUIREMENTS Both devices need SidecarBridge. The Mac needs Screen Recording permission to share its display and Accessibility/event-posting permission for remote input. File access remains subject to macOS privacy permissions and sandbox grants. Sessions stay local or nearby; no cloud relay or user account is required. SidecarBridge mirrors the Mac's main display, not a native extended display, and does not bypass Apple's security protections. This release focuses on Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Network Hamster
Diagnose internet issues with a real-time visual indicator and detailed diagnostics. Understand your network's performance, identify bottlenecks like bufferbloat, and generate shareable reports to prove problems to your ISP.
- One-tap network diagnosis
- Bufferbloat grading and fixes
- Live ping, jitter, packet loss monitoring
- Speed test with history
- Router vs. internet fault isolation
- Advanced tools like MTR and Ping Lab
- Shareable diagnostic reports
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Your internet is acting up. Is it your Wi-Fi? Your router? Your ISP? Network Hamster tells you — in plain English. A helmeted hamster pedals a bicycle in real time, matched to your actual latency. Fast connection, fast pedaling. Congested network, and he grinds to a crawl. It's the most honest status indicator you'll ever install. Behind the mascot is a genuinely serious diagnostic toolkit. ONE-TAP DIAGNOSIS Tap Diagnose and get eight checks in under a minute: interface, captive portal, your router versus the internet, NAT topology, DNS, web response time, and latency under load. Then a verdict in words you can act on — "Local network is healthy, high latency is upstream. Your router is not the problem." BUFFERBLOAT GRADING The reason your video calls stutter when someone downloads something. Network Hamster measures how much your latency balloons under load and grades it A+ through F, then tells you exactly how to fix it. FIND OUT WHERE YOU STAND • Live ping, jitter, packet loss, and p95 latency across six rotating servers • Speed test with download, upload, and bufferbloat, plus saved history • Router vs. internet isolation — know instantly whose fault it is • CGNAT, double NAT, and symmetric NAT detection • DNS benchmarking against Cloudflare, Google, and Quad9 ADVANCED TOOLS • Monitor Mode — ping every second for hours, graph the whole session, get alerted the moment your connection drops, and export CSV • MTR traceroute with per-hop whois, reverse DNS, and a map of where your packets actually travel • Ping Lab — test with different packet sizes to expose MTU and queueing problems • Buffer Probe — detects undersized modem buffers that quietly cost you the bandwidth you pay for • Wireless Health — tells you whether jitter is born on your Wi-Fi or upstream • Wi-Fi Guard — catches repeated forced disconnects • Inbound Watch — spots unusual traffic arriving at your device • Cellular coverage mapping and DNS record lookup PROVE IT TO YOUR ISP Every diagnosis exports as a shareable report: latency per server, packet loss, traceroute, bufferbloat grade, and a timestamped event log. Stop arguing from memory. Paste the evidence. BUILT HONESTLY Some things iOS simply does not allow — Wi-Fi signal strength, raw packet capture, cell tower identity. Network Hamster never fakes them. Where a limit exists, the app says so and does the most useful thing that is actually possible. No account. No tracking. No data collection. Just a hamster who is very concerned about your ping.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Network Hamster at every 3 days against SidecarBridge's fortnightly. SidecarBridge's advantage is device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
SidecarBridge ships an update fortnightly, Network Hamster every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | SidecarBridge | Network Hamster |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Number of ratings | — | 2 — better |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 8 MB | 2 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | chienchung Yu | HarborViewIT, LLC |
In-app purchases
SidecarBridge
No in-app purchases
Network Hamster
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is SidecarBridge free?
Is Network Hamster free?
Do SidecarBridge or Network Hamster have ads?
Which is updated more often, SidecarBridge or Network Hamster?
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