Discover

Your network at a glance

Discover opens with the network name, this device’s address, the subnet and the gateway, and can fill the gateway into Latency Test or Port Check. “Find Services” listens for Bonjour announcements for 8 to 60 seconds, in the groups you choose, such as printers, file shares and devices with a web or SSH login.

Scan the network

The device scan (“Scan This Network”, Linkalyst Plus) probes up to 256 addresses on the current subnet with Ping and TCP connections, and asks Bonjour, UPnP, NetBIOS and reverse DNS for names. Each address that answers gets a row with its names and where they came from, the manufacturer and model when the device reports them, its ping time and the common ports that accepted a connection.

On iOS 27 and later, rows can also show the MAC address, with the manufacturer looked up from it unless the address is private. Save a device to My Devices to find it again.

What a scan does not show

A scan is a snapshot of the addresses that answered this time. A device that is asleep or ignores probes won’t appear, so a missing device is not proof that it is offline. On a network larger than a /24, only your device’s /24 block is scanned. iOS asks once for the Local Network permission; without it, nothing is sent. Scan only networks you own or are allowed to test.