Wireshark-dev: [Wireshark-dev] Re: Idea for changing interface scanning

From: Josh Clark <josh@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2026 10:03:41 -0400
Hey Roland,

I like that idea, but I wonder if there’s a UI design option to hide the un-scannable interfaces instead of a configuration option. 

Could you split interfaces into “available to capture” and “not available to capture” sections and have “not available to capture” collapsed by default?

On Mon, Apr 13, 2026 at 07:39 Roland Knall <rknall@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi All

Currently we return ALL interfaces. While that is good in general, it will also return interfaces on OSX and possible other systems that are not available at the moment of scanning. 

In my case for instance, devices which are dev-devices (like Seeger J-Link or MacroPad2040) created usb modem interfaces that are there even when the devices are not attached or available. 

PCAP has the ability to inform via flags (Connected, Unknown, Inactive, ...) but we currently ignore them. I would like to - by default - use that information in interface_frame to hide the interfaces not connected or unknown, but give the user via configuration an option to enable them if they wish so. On my system that would reduce the number of available devices from 19 to 5 which I think especially users new to Wireshark would appreciate. 

What do you think?

cheers,
Roland
_______________________________________________
Wireshark-dev mailing list -- wireshark-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe send an email to wireshark-dev-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxx