A pile of identical cables, which one actually works?
We've all been there: a drawer stuffed with five or six USB-C cables that look identical, but some handle 100W fast-charging while others barely do 5W; some connect 4K monitors, others can't even transfer data from a phone. I never know which one to pack when heading out, only to realize I grabbed the wrong one at a client's office. I also messed this up—I once brought a charge-only cable to a product video shoot, and my camera couldn't connect to the laptop to offload footage. I was stuck waiting all afternoon.
WhatCable: Plug it in and know what it can do
WhatCable is a Mac menu bar tool. Plug in a cable, and it tells you in plain English what it actually does: charging wattage, data transfer speed, whether it supports a monitor, and if it handles Thunderbolt (a high-speed protocol for connecting premium peripherals). No need to understand any technical jargon. My friend Xiaolin, who does e-commerce photography in Shenzhen, had a dozen USB-C cables mixed together. After installing this, she spent 10 minutes plugging each one in, slapped a label on them, and never mixed them up again.
Get it done today
Money: Free, open-source software. Time: 2 minutes to download and install, 10 minutes to test the cables on hand. Technical barrier: Just knowing how to install a Mac app, no other setup. First step: Open github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable, click "Releases" on the page, download the .dmg file (Mac app installer), double-click to open, and drag it to your Applications folder.
Advice by stage
If we're just starting out and only have a couple of cables, we can skip this for now and install it when we have more. If we have 1-2 clients and often carry our laptops around, I'd suggest we spend 2 minutes installing it today so we never pack the wrong cable again. When scaling up and sharing cables across a team, I recommend everyone install it and label each cable, so we stop asking "can this cable connect to a monitor?"