Is Nighthawk safe to use?

Nighthawk integrates 31 third-party SDKs spanning infrastructure, analytics, and advertising. Its App Store privacy label declares cross-app tracking via Usage Data. It collects data linked to your identity including Purchases, Financial Info, Location, and Contact Info and 4 more categories. It includes 2 advertising or attribution SDKs. Whether this is acceptable depends on your personal privacy preferences.

What permissions does Nighthawk need?

Nighthawk requests 4 iOS permissions: Photo Library, Location (When In Use), Save to Photo Library, and Local Network.

What data does Nighthawk collect?

According to its App Store privacy label, Nighthawk declares cross-app tracking via Usage Data. It collects data linked to your identity including Purchases, Financial Info, Location, Contact Info, User Content, Identifiers, Usage Data, and Diagnostics.

How many SDKs does Nighthawk have?

Nighthawk integrates 31 third-party SDKs. 2 for advertising, 7 for analytics, 1 for crash reporting, 12 for infrastructure, and 8 for other.

Does Nighthawk use Google SDKs?

Yes. Nighthawk includes 6 Google or Firebase SDKs: Firebase Core, Firebase Diagnostics, Google Data Transport, Firebase Crashlytics, Firebase Installations, and Google Utilities. These are used for cloud infrastructure and services, not advertising.

Does Nighthawk access your location?

Yes. Nighthawk requests location access. The developer states: "Location permission is required for WiFi auto-connect and management purposes only.".

Does Nighthawk run in the background?

Yes. Nighthawk registers 2 background modes, which means it can perform certain tasks when you're not actively using it.

What are some alternatives to Nighthawk?

Other utilities apps include 1.1.1.1 , InstaWrite AI , AI Identifier , ExtraSpace , Authenticator , and Authenticator . Each app takes a different approach to utilities and varies in its data collection and SDK usage.

Utilities · Privacy report

NETGEAR Nighthawk - WiFi App

Free · ★4.7 · NETGEAR

Is Nighthawk safe?

It leans heavily on third-party trackers.

Our take. Nighthawk is built with more third-party tracking code than 79% of the utilities we have scanned.

Privacy footprint · vs 112 utilitiesHeavy

Trackers from other companies9 · a lot

typical utilities: 4

Data the app links to you8 types · some

typical utilities: 1 · from its own privacy label

What it collects about you

Nighthawk links 8 categories of your data to you.

From the developer's own App Store privacy label. These are the kinds of data Nighthawk ties to your identity, and it also declares it shares data to track you across other apps.

PurchasesFinancial InfoLocationContact InfoUser ContentIdentifiersUsage DataDiagnostics

Who else is inside

It carries trackers from 3 companies.

Third-party SDKs found in the app, matched to the company that publishes each. Present in the code; we do not observe what they transmit.

🏢Other third partiesadvertising

A third-party SDK.

SDKs

🏢Monitoring SDKAnalytics

Crash and performance monitoring.

SDKs

🇺🇸GoogleAnalytics

Firebase, AdMob and Google analytics SDKs, built to record how you use the app and serve ads.

SDKs

How it compares

Where it sits among utilities.

Every one of these apps we have scanned, on the two measures above: third-party trackers it carries (across) and data it links to you on its own label (up). Toward the top right is more invasive.

Each dot is one utilitie app. Nighthawk sits to the right, carrying more third-party tracking than most.

Other signals

One more flag.

Each is a fact read straight from the app. The same checks run on every app we scan. Only the ones that apply here are shown.

It declares cross-app tracking

Its own App Store label says it tracks you across other companies apps and websites using your advertising identifier.

The evidence

What it's built from.

All 31 SDKs in the app, grouped by what they are for. 9 are third-party trackers.

2advertising

7analytics

1crash reporting

1push & messaging

20standard libraries

9 of the 31 are third-party trackers. One is a push-notification SDK that delivers notifications, rather than tracking you across apps. The rest are the app's own code and standard open-source building blocks.

Show the full SDK list

Other third partiesadvertising

Luciq Audience SDK · Snap Kit · Optimizely

Monitoring SDKAnalytics

Datadog · Datadog Internal · Datadog RUM

GoogleAnalytics · USA

Firebase Core · Firebase Diagnostics · Google Data Transport

Push & messaging1 · notifications

AirshipKit

Standard libraries20 · on-device

The app's own code plus open-source interface, storage and networking libraries.

How we know this

Counterspy downloads the app from the App Store and statically analyzes its compiled binary. Embedded SDKs are matched against a signature database and resolved to the company that operates each. We also read the developer's App Store privacy label, which lists the data the app says it collects and links to you. We do not run the app or intercept its traffic, so we report capabilities present in the code and the developer's own disclosures, not proven transmission. We assess privacy and data collection, not malware, security flaws, or developer intent. Reports are automated and never edited for payment. Scan v2.52.0, 2026-04-05.

Third-party trackers are advertising, analytics and attribution SDKs detected by static signature matching. Presence shows a capability is compiled in, not that it ran or transmitted data.
"Data the app links to you" is the count of data categories the developer declares as Data Linked To You in its App Store privacy label. Labels are self-reported and not verified by Apple.
Comparison across the 112 utilities in our corpus. Trackers: median 4. Data linked to you: median 1.