This is the practical companion to everything HisnLabs has written about outbound firewalls: the actual steps, in order, to install FireAI on a Mac, get through the one approval macOS requires, survive the first day of prompts, and tune it so that it stays quiet without becoming useless. Where a screen’s exact wording may change between macOS versions, we describe what you are looking for rather than quoting a label, and we cite Apple’s own guides for the parts of the process that belong to macOS.
Before you start: what FireAI needs and what it is not
FireAI runs on Macs with Apple silicon, meaning an M1 chip or later, on macOS 14 Sonoma or newer. There is no Intel build at the moment; one is planned, but if your Mac is Intel-based this guide is not for you yet. A single-user license is a one-time purchase of €49, $49 or £49; the business plan is €6 per Mac per month, billed yearly. The on-device AI model is an optional download of about 1.5 GB that you can add or skip in a later step.
It also helps to be clear about the boundary before installing anything. FireAI is a firewall: it watches and controls the connections your apps make. It does not scan files, does not remove software from your disk, does not analyse processes in memory and does not encrypt or decrypt anything. Keep macOS updated, keep Gatekeeper and XProtect in place, and treat FireAI as the network layer on top of them.
Step 1: Download and install
Download FireAI from hisnlabs.com only. Open the downloaded disk image and drag FireAI to your Applications folder, then eject the image and launch the app from Applications. macOS should open it after the usual first-launch confirmation for a downloaded app. If macOS instead refuses to open it and offers an “Open Anyway” route in Privacy & Security settings, stop: Apple’s own guide notes that overriding that check is the most common way a Mac ends up with harmful software installed. Delete the file and download again from hisnlabs.com rather than forcing it.
Step 2: Approve the network extension
This is the step that trips most people up, and it is entirely macOS doing its job. A modern Mac firewall is built as a network extension of the content-filter kind. Apple’s developer documentation explains that these extensions run in user space rather than in the kernel, and macOS will not let one start filtering until you, the user, have allowed it.
When FireAI first launches, it asks macOS to install its filter and macOS shows a system notice that a network filter or system extension wants to be enabled. Follow the prompt into System Settings. On macOS Sonoma and later, extensions live under General, then Login Items & Extensions; Apple’s User Guide describes the Network Extensions entry there as the place that lets software “customize and extend core networking features such as configuring a VPN or content filter”. Allow FireAI’s filter, authenticate with your password or Touch ID, and return to the app. If you ever want FireAI out of the path entirely, the same screen turns it off.
- If no notice appeared, open System Settings yourself, go to General, then Login Items & Extensions, and look for FireAI under Network Extensions.
- If the toggle appears but connections still flow unfiltered, quit and relaunch FireAI once; the filter attaches at launch.
- You approve this once per Mac. Updates to FireAI do not ask again unless the extension itself changes.
Step 3: Decide about the AI model
FireAI now offers to download its on-device model. Without it, you still get the full firewall: prompts, per-app rules, security modes, blocklists, threat feeds, the live map, the kill switch and the unencrypted data guard. With it, connections from apps that have no rule yet are reviewed by the model, which blocks or flags anything that looks wrong and writes down its reason in plain language in the prompt. The download is roughly 1.5 GB and happens once; after that nothing about your traffic is sent anywhere, because the review happens on your Mac. On a first install we suggest taking the model: it is exactly the newcomer apps that benefit from a second opinion.
Step 4: The first prompts
Within minutes of the filter attaching, your regular apps will ask to connect, and FireAI will prompt you for each app it does not yet know. A prompt names the app, the destination, the port and, if the model is installed, the reviewer’s reason. Treat the first hour as a guided tour of your own machine. For the apps you recognise and use daily, allow them; each answer becomes a rule tied to that app’s code signature, so you are never asked about that app again for that kind of connection.
For anything you do not recognise, deny it. Nothing breaks permanently: the denial is a visible rule in the list, and you can flip it later. The most useful habit here is to read the reason before clicking. A background helper of an app you trust connecting to that vendor’s domain is normal; a helper you have never heard of reaching a raw IP address is worth a search before you allow it.
Step 5: Choose a security mode
FireAI ships with four modes, and switching between them is the single fastest way to adapt the firewall to where you are. Home is the everyday setting for a trusted network. Coffee shop is for shared or public Wi-Fi and tightens what is allowed. Paranoid and Under attack are the strict modes: in addition to your rules, they block telemetry, trackers and unsigned apps. You can change mode from the app, or simply type “go to Paranoid mode” in the plain-language box, in English or French. A good default is Home at home and Coffee shop everywhere else; reserve Under attack for the moment you suspect something is actually wrong and want everything non-essential silenced while you look.
Step 6: Refine per-app rules
Prompts produce broad rules: allow this app, deny that one. After a few days, open the rules list and tighten the ones that matter. A rule can allow or deny by host, by domain, by IP address or by port. For a work tool that should only ever talk to its own service, allow that domain and deny the rest. For a utility that needs updates and nothing else, allow its update host only. Because rules follow the app’s code signature rather than its file name, a rule you write for an app survives the app being moved or updated, and a different binary using the same name does not inherit it.
The plain-language box handles the common cases without a form: “block Microsoft Teams” creates the deny rule directly. And if the reviewer made a call you disagree with, every AI decision is itself a rule in the same list, so undoing it is the same edit as any other.
Step 7: Turn on threat feeds and blocklists
This part is not AI and does not need to be. FireAI can apply public threat-intelligence feeds as system-wide IP blocklists, matched locally against every connection from every app: abuse.ch, whose URLhaus, ThreatFox and SSL Blacklist projects are community-driven threat data; the Spamhaus DROP list; Phishing Army, a free phishing-domain list regenerated every six hours from sources such as PhishTank and OpenPhish; OpenPhish; the Tor exit node list; and FireHOL, which aggregates and documents publicly available IP lists under an open-source toolchain. Turn on the feeds you want in the settings; the lists are updated and applied on your Mac, not on a server.
Two notes. Blocking Tor exit nodes is sensible for a business Mac that should never see traffic to or from anonymised relays and a poor idea if you use Tor on purpose. And any public list can carry an entry that is wrong for you; when a connection is blocked by a feed, FireAI shows which one, and a per-app allow rule for that destination overrides it.
Step 8: The guards you set once
- Unencrypted data guard: leave it on. It stops card numbers, passwords and API keys from leaving the Mac over plain HTTP. If a legacy internal tool needs plain HTTP, write it an explicit rule rather than switching the guard off globally.
- Kill switch: learn where it is before you need it. It cuts internet access while keeping your local network, so printers, file shares and screen sharing keep working while you investigate.
- Live world map: every connection appears on the 3D globe, blocked ones in red. It is the quickest way to notice an app talking to a country it has no reason to.
Step 9: Export a rule file
Once the rules feel right, export them. FireAI writes rules as a readable text file that you can keep as a backup, read in any editor, and import on another Mac so it starts from the same policy. For a small team this is currently the way to roll one setup to every machine; FireAI does not yet have a central admin console or an MDM deployment guide, both of which are on the roadmap. Export again after any significant change, and keep the file with your other configuration.
Troubleshooting
- An app suddenly cannot connect: open the rules list and search for the app. A deny you answered in a hurry, a strict mode, or a feed match are the three usual causes, and each is shown on the rule.
- You dismissed a prompt without answering: the connection was not allowed. Trigger the action in the app again and the prompt returns.
- Nothing is being filtered: check General, then Login Items & Extensions, for FireAI’s network extension, then relaunch the app.
- Too many prompts: switch to Home mode while you work through them, and let the reviewer handle unknowns if you have installed the model. The volume drops sharply after the first few days.
- You want it gone: turn the extension off in System Settings, or quit and remove FireAI; macOS returns to its normal state without the filter.
Do not forget Apple’s own firewall
FireAI covers outbound traffic. Apple’s built-in firewall covers the other direction, blocking connections that other computers initiate towards your Mac, and Apple’s User Guide shows how to turn it on under System Settings, Network, Firewall. The two do not conflict. Turn Apple’s on, add FireAI on top, and you have both sides of the connection covered by tools that each do one job.
How FireAI and HisnLabs fit in
The steps above are the whole setup: FireAI is designed so that after one attentive week the rules do the work, the on-device reviewer handles the newcomers, and you only hear from it when something is genuinely worth a look.
FireAI is HisnLabs’ own product: an on-device AI firewall for Mac. It shows every connection your apps make, in plain language, and lets you decide what leaves your Mac — its AI runs locally, so your traffic is never sent to us or anyone else. HisnLabs’ security research team is the group that keeps that decision-making accurate: cataloguing which domains are ordinary telemetry versus a real product, tracking the country and network behind a connection, and training the on-device model (its Autopilot feature) on real traffic patterns, all without any of it leaving your Mac.
You can read the technical decisions behind it, or try FireAI for 17 days, at FireAI, by HisnLabs.