WavyFi

WavyFi logo

Windows WiFi scanner that also sees WiFi Direct peers — phones, TVs, Miracast.

WavyFi listens to the airwaves around a Windows machine and turns what it hears into advice: which channel your own WiFi network should use, which band is worth moving to, and which security settings need fixing. Along the way it surfaces a layer most WiFi analyzers ignore entirely — the WiFi Direct devices (phones, TVs, printers, Miracast receivers) advertising peer-to-peer around you.

WavyFi main window: network table with channel occupancy graphs, recommendations, WiFi Direct devices and signal history

The channel-occupancy view takes its inspiration from inSSIDer, but WavyFi goes its own way:

• recommendation-first — a congestion-scoring engine tells you what to change, not just what exists;
• WiFi Direct discovery side by side with infrastructure networks;
• multi-adapter scanning — several radios at once, one row per adapter, for comparing reception;
• persistence of vision — networks fade instead of blinking out; peers are kept for the whole session (their advertising is bursty);
• a full CLI (scan / p2p verbs) with filters, sorting and CSV for scripting — same engine, no window;
• C# / WPF with zero third-party dependencies.

• Nearby networks — SSID, signal (%, dBm), channel, frequency, band (2.4/5/6 GHz), security, BSSID, last-seen age. Your connected network is highlighted. Networks persist across scans: entries that drop out fade (stale) and are removed after 2 minutes. Auto-refreshes every 5 seconds via the Native WiFi API (wlanapi.dll).
• Security detail — auth (WPA2/WPA3...), cipher (AES-CCMP, TKIP...), WPS version parsed from the WPS information element ("-" when absent). Right-click the table header to choose visible columns.
• Rates — "Max rate" is the theoretical top PHY rate computed from the HT/VHT/HE capability elements (MCS ceiling ×ばつ spatial streams ×ばつ operating width ×ばつ guard interval); "Legacy rates" lists the a/b/g compatibility rates from the beacon's Supported Rates elements (these cap at 54 Mbps by design — modern rates are advertised as MCS maps, not rate lists).
• Vendor identification — each BSSID (and WiFi Direct peer) is resolved to its manufacturer via an embedded IEEE OUI snapshot (see below).
• Filtering — search box (SSID/BSSID/vendor), band selector, minimum signal slider, and a last-seen slider (log scale, 5 s up to 168 h) that hides entries not seen recently enough; the tables and graphs all respect the active filters.
• Signal over time — select one or more network rows to plot their RSSI history as lines (5-minute sliding window, colors match the channel graphs). Selected WiFi Direct peers plot as dots: their readings arrive in sparse bursts, so dots show exactly what was measured instead of faking a continuous line.
• Channel graphs — inSSIDer-style occupancy curves per band (custom-drawn, no chart library): each network is a bell curve spanning its real bonded width (20 up to 320 MHz, from the HT/VHT/HE/EHT Operation elements), peaking at its RSSI, colored by BSSID, faded when stale. Selected table rows are emphasized. Channel 14 is placed at its true 2484 MHz position.
• WiFi Direct devices — live discovery of advertising P2P peers (phones, TVs, Miracast receivers, printers) via Windows.Devices.WiFiDirect, shown in a compact sortable grid: name, RSSI (when reported), device type, pairing state, vendor, MAC, last seen. The search box and minimum-signal slider filter this grid too. Peers advertise in bursts, so they are kept for the whole session: stale ones fade and their age keeps counting.
• Recommendations — congestion-scored best channel for 2.4 GHz (among 1/6/11) and 5 GHz (non-DFS, with a DFS hint when quieter), overlap analysis for your own network, and security upgrade advice.

Requires the .NET 10 SDK on Windows 10 19041+.

dotnet build # whole solution
dotnet run --project src/WavyFi # the GUI
dotnet test # unit tests (parser, rates, advisor, ...)

If the network list is empty, enable Location access in Windows Settings > Privacy & security > Location — Windows gates WiFi scan results behind it.

Running the exe with any arguments scans from the terminal instead of opening the window (output attaches to the parent console; redirection and piping work):

WavyFi.exe scan [options] scan for WiFi networks (default verb)
WavyFi.exe p2p [options] list advertising WiFi Direct peers
WavyFi.exe --demo GUI with synthetic showcase data (the screenshot above)
 --adapters all|N[,M...] (scan) adapters to use (default: the first one)
 --list-adapters (scan) list adapters with their indexes and exit
 --band 2.4|5|6 (scan) only show this band
 --advise (scan) append channel recommendations
 --search TEXT name/BSSID/MAC/vendor substring filter
 --min-signal DBM hide entries weaker than this (e.g. -75)
 --csv CSV output instead of a table
 --sort COL[:asc|desc][,COL...]
 sort by column(s), e.g. channel:asc,rssi:desc
 --watch [SECONDS] keep scanning every SECONDS (default 5)
 --timeout SECONDS max wait per sweep (default: 6 scan, 10 p2p)
 -v, --version print the program version
 -h, --help usage help

Examples: WavyFi.exe scan --band 2.4 --min-signal -80 --advise, WavyFi.exe scan --adapters all --csv > networks.csv, WavyFi.exe p2p --sort type --watch 10.

Note: the exe is a GUI-subsystem binary, so cmd/PowerShell print their prompt without waiting for it; WavyFi nudges the shell to redraw the prompt when the output is done (interactive consoles only — piped and redirected output is untouched).

• Scanning toggle — starts/stops the 5-second scan loop. Turning it on clears previously accumulated data (fresh session). While it's on, the adapter dropdown is locked; pause to switch adapters.
• Adapters dropdown — multi-select with checkboxes; defaults to the first adapter found. With several selected, every network appears once per adapter that hears it (compare reception between radios); the hidden "Adapter" column shows [index] + name, and graph labels carry the [index] suffix. Re-enumerated each time it opens, so USB adapters plugged in later appear; vanished adapters are dropped automatically.
• Table — click a row to select (plain click on a selected row unselects; empty space clears the selection). Selected networks are plotted in the signal-over-time graph and emphasized in the channel graphs. Right-click the header for the column chooser; hover a header for a description of the column. Right-click a cell for copy options (cell / rows / whole filtered table as CSV); Ctrl+C copies selected rows.
• Filters — search matches name, BSSID, and vendor; band and minimum signal narrow the table and graphs (recommendations always use all data).
• Persistence — networks that drop out of a scan fade (stale) and are removed after 2 minutes unseen; "Last seen" shows the age. WiFi Direct peers fade too but are kept for the whole session (their advertising is bursty, so absence rarely means the device left).
• WiFi Direct grid — sortable like the network table (RSSI sorts numerically); right-click a row for copy options; header right-click opens its own column chooser. Peers with no signal reading are hidden only while the minimum-signal slider is raised.

• WiFi Direct discovery uses whatever radio Windows chooses for it, so peers cannot be attributed to a specific adapter.
• No monitor-mode capture — everything comes from standard scans, which is all the advice engine needs.
• Scan sweeps take the radio 2-5 s (DFS/6 GHz channels are listened to passively). The app refreshes as soon as the driver signals scan completion (WlanRegisterNotification), in addition to the 5 s timer.
• WiFi 7 (802.11be) is fully handled: widths (up to 320 MHz) from the EHT Operation element, max rates (MCS 12/13, 4096-QAM) from the EHT Capabilities MCS map.
• WiFi 8 (802.11bn) is not detected yet: the draft's element IDs are assigned in the IEEE ANA database, which is not publicly stable — hardcoding a guess could misparse other elements. A bn AP will show its WiFi 7 capabilities until the IDs are published (revisit once Wireshark's dissector carries them).
• "Your own network" grouping (excluding your router's other radios from congestion advice) uses a MAC heuristic — mesh nodes with unrelated MACs still count as neighbors.

The Vendor column (and WiFi Direct device details) resolve MAC prefixes against an embedded copy of the Wireshark manuf file — the IEEE Registration Authority's OUI registry as curated and published by the Wireshark project:

• Canonical source: https://www.wireshark.org/download/automated/data/manuf
• Credit: OUI data © IEEE Registration Authority; compiled and maintained by the Wireshark project. Upstream regenerates it weekly — per their request, do not fetch it more often than that.

The snapshot lives at src/WavyFi.Core/Resources/manuf.gz (embedded resource, last updated 2026年07月21日). To refresh it:

curl -sL https://www.wireshark.org/download/automated/data/manuf -o src/WavyFi.Core/Resources/manuf
gzip -9 -f src/WavyFi.Core/Resources/manuf # produces manuf.gz
dotnet build # re-embeds the resource

Only plain 24-bit OUI rows are used (the rarer /28 and /36 sub-allocations are skipped). Locally administered MACs — randomized or virtual BSSIDs — never appear in the registry and are shown as "(unknown vendor)".

MIT — see LICENSE. The embedded OUI registry snapshot is credited above.