NetNeighbor

NetNeighbor is a Linux desktop application that discovers and monitors devices on your local network — a modern equivalent of the Windows Network Neighborhood experience.

Current release: 1.0.0

Features

• Automatic discovery — SSDP, mDNS/Bonjour, WS-Discovery, NetBIOS; no active port scan
• Instant startup — previously-seen devices appear from cache in < 100 ms
• List and icon grid views with sidebar categories (by type or location)
• Open devices in one click — HTTP, HTTPS, SMB, SSH, FTP, SFTP, Telnet with configurable priority
• Per-device overrides — custom name, type, location, icon, and connection commands
• System tray — minimize to tray, start minimized, session autostart
• Localised — French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified/Traditional)
• Packaged as .deb (Ubuntu/Mint/Debian), .AppImage, and tarball

Download

Latest release: GitHub Releases

Available formats: .deb · .AppImage · .tar.gz

Requirements

• Linux desktop with GTK 3
• Python 3.10+

Ubuntu / Linux Mint / Debian

sudo apt install -y python3-gi python3-gi-cairo gir1.2-gtk-3.0
sudo apt install -y samba-common-bin                             # NetBIOS names
sudo apt install -y gir1.2-ayatanaappindicator3-0.1             # system tray

These dependencies are installed automatically when using the .deb package.

Install

.deb package (recommended):

sudo dpkg -i netneighbor_1.0.0_amd64.deb

.AppImage:

chmod +x NetNeighbor-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage
./NetNeighbor-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage

Tarball:

tar -xzf netneighbor-1.0.0.tar.gz
cd netneighbor-1.0.0
bash install-user-desktop.sh   # optional: add menu shortcut
bash run.sh

Run from source

python -m venv .venv --system-site-packages
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python main.py

Demo data is enabled by default. Disable with:

NETNEIGHBOR_DEMO=0 python main.py

Documentation

User documentation: USER_DOCUMENTATION.md

Developer documentation: docs/README.md

Translations

Language	Code	Status
French	fr	Complete
Italian	it	Complete
Spanish	es	Complete
German	de	Complete
Dutch	nl	Complete
Traditional Chinese	zh_TW	Complete
Simplified Chinese	zh_CN	Complete
Japanese	ja	Complete

Compile after editing a .po file:

msgfmt locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/netneighbor.po -o locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/netneighbor.mo

Test in a specific language:

LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8 python main.py

Full i18n workflow: docs/I18N.md

Autodetection and corrections

Device names and types are inferred from protocol announcements — they are best-effort. Use right-click → Type / Rename / Location / Icon for per-device corrections. Community rule overlays: docs/COMMUNITY_OVERRIDES.md.

Pending work

docs/TODO.md

Contribution and maintenance notes: docs/MAINTENANCE.md