PortaPack Manager

Deutsch · English

A receiving lab for the HackRF One with PortaPack – as a macOS app.

Aircraft and ships on the map, FM, digital radio and TV, weather balloons and satellite images, wireless sensors and smart home radio – PortaPack Manager decodes everything itself, without extra software. Along the way it keeps the PortaPack's Mayhem firmware up to date.

Made for beginners: plug in, click a tile on the start page, done. The app sets gain, frequencies and channels by itself – you can still adjust everything by hand.

➜ Manual (the same as Help in the app)

The screenshots show the German interface; the app follows the system language (German or English) and can be switched under Settings ▸ General.

What the app does

Receiving (HackRF mode – the app switches into it by itself)

Area	Receivers
Tools	Reception schedule (satellites and weather balloons automatically) · Spectrum and waterfall with markers and max hold · Occupancy monitor over hours/days · LTE cell search · Antenna check · IQ recording and playback, SigMF export/import
Broadcast	FM with RDS and stereo, AM/NFM, SSB/CW with selectable filters · DAB+ · DVB-T2 (terrestrial TV) · Audio recording
Aviation	ADS-B with map, type, route, photo and airports · ACARS/VDL2 with plain-language interpretation and CPDLC · Airband scanner with transcription (on the Mac) and search · VOR beacons with cross bearing · FLARM · Drone ID (Remote ID)
Maritime & radio services	AIS with map and photo · Maritime distress (DSC) · APRS · Paging (DAPNET)
Weather	Radiosondes (weather balloons) · Weather satellite METEOR-M
Navigation & time	GPS positioning · DCF77 radio clock
Smart home & IoT	Wireless sensors (433/868 MHz) · Z-Wave, Homematic, EnOcean, wireless meters (868 MHz) · Zigbee with decryption · Thread · Bluetooth LE · Wi-Fi · LoRaWAN · Meshtastic
Amateur radio & space	ISS (SSTV, APRS) and amateur satellites · FT8/WSPR · Hydrogen line (radio astronomy)

Made for beginners

• Start page with tiles: one click opens, switches and starts.
• Every receiver page has the same layout, with a status line in plain language (“Receiving – about 12 messages per minute”).
• Optimize Signal and automatic gain control against overload.
• Antenna check: measures all bands and tells you what your antenna is good for.
• Initial setup with automatic crystal calibration; all settings in one place.
• Frequency memory for all pages, CSV import and export (including lists from SDR++/CHIRP); save live lists as CSV.
• Keeps running in the background, with a menu bar icon and, if you like, start at login.
• Interface and manual in German and English; built-in manual with one chapter per page.

On the go and connected

• Remote access from your phone – see below.
• Notifications on the Mac or via ntfy on your phone.
• Archive of all sightings (aircraft, ships, weather balloons, airband) in a database, with retention period and ZIP backup.
• Share data (all opt-in): ADS-B to adsb.fi/airplanes.live, AIS as NMEA, radiosondes to SondeHub, readings to Home Assistant (MQTT).

Device management (Mayhem mode)

• Firmware update (nightly/stable) with package and checksum verification, “Renew Device Completely” including the SD card contents.
• Remote control of the PortaPack: its display appears live on the Mac; clicks act as touches, arrow keys and Enter work like the buttons on the device, and you type text directly. Screenshots at the push of a button.
• Edit the SD card (with checksums, or as a drive for large amounts), console.

Remote access from your phone

The Mac becomes a receiver you can use from the sofa or on the road: a web page for phone and tablet – nothing to install, on the iPhone simply “Add to Home Screen”.

• 14 receivers in one menu: aircraft and ships on the map, airband, aircraft datalink, maritime distress, weather & satellites (balloons with landing estimate and flight profile), DAB+ and radio, spectrum, occupancy monitor, wireless sensors, smart home 868, Zigbee with network map, FT8/WSPR.
• Audio on the phone for radio, DAB+ and airband; tuning and band scan from the phone.
• Start, stop, Optimize Signal – the phone switches the HackRF itself. Frequency memory, airband channel list and reception schedule are shared with the Mac; schedule entries can be skipped from the phone.
• Secure by default: sign-in with your own accounts (user name and password, roles “Control” and “View only”), only devices from your home network or VPN (e.g. Tailscale) are accepted, keys for Zigbee or meters never leave the Mac.
• German and English, light and dark.

Requirements

• macOS 15 or later (Apple silicon or Intel)
• HackRF One with PortaPack and Mayhem firmware (from about v2.0 or nightly 2024)
• An antenna – the better and higher, the more you receive. For weather satellites a dedicated satellite antenna (V-dipole/QFH), for GPS an active GPS antenna.

Installation

Ready-made app: download the disk image PortaPackManager-<version>.dmg from Releases, open it and drag the app to Applications. It is signed with Developer ID and notarized by Apple – macOS starts it without a warning.

From source (Xcode 26 and XcodeGen):

brew install xcodegen
Scripts/run.sh            # build, install to ~/Applications, launch

For a signed app, create Config/Signing.local.xcconfig from the template; without it the project builds unsigned. If a Developer ID certificate is in the keychain, run.sh signs with it.

Privacy and legal

• The app only receives; it does not transmit over the air.
• Your location stays on the Mac unless you explicitly share it. What the app sends to the internet (firmware, aircraft and ship photos, satellite orbits …) is listed in the manual.
• Messages not intended for you – such as alerts for fire brigades, ambulance services and police – may neither be evaluated nor passed on (in Germany § 5 TDDDG; other countries have similar rules). That's why the pager receiver only offers DAPNET.

Development

xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project PortaPackManager.xcodeproj -scheme PortaPackManager -destination 'platform=macOS' build
xcodebuild test -project PortaPackManager.xcodeproj -scheme PortaPackManager -destination 'platform=macOS'

• SwiftUI, Swift 6, no third-party libraries. USB via IOKit (PortaPackManager/HackRF/HackRFUSB.c), serial via POSIX.
• More than 900 tests (Swift Testing): decoders with reference vectors and test signals, a fuzz test for all radio parsers, a simulation test bench for DVB-T2.
• Code comments are in German.
• New receiver pages get a chapter in Docs/Hilfe.md and Docs/Help-en.md (a test checks the German manual).

Release

Scripts/release.sh --dry-run   # tests, build, Developer ID signature, DMG – without Apple
Scripts/release.sh             # plus notarization and stapling; uploads nothing

Requires a “Developer ID Application” certificate and a notarytool profile in the keychain (name in NOTARY_PROFILE, default portapack-notarisierung).

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. See CHANGELOG.md for what changed in each version.

PortaPack Manager is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by ShareBrained Technology (PortaPack), Great Scott Gadgets (HackRF) or the Mayhem firmware team. The names are used only to describe compatibility.

Several decoders are based on free GPL projects or use their tables – among them gr-dtv (DVB-T2 LDPC), dumpvdl2/libacars (VDL2, CPDLC schemas), rtl_433 (wireless sensors), readsb/dump1090 (ADS-B), SatDump (METEOR), gr-lora (LoRa) and WSJT-X via ft8_lib (MIT) and wsprd (FT8/WSPR: LDPC tables, Fano metric). Leaflet 1.9.4 (BSD-2-Clause, © Vladimir Agafonkin, CloudMade) is bundled for the maps in remote access.