Rectangle trying to reach out to Google servers

[diogovieira]

For some reason I was prompted by LuLu to allow or block a request from the Rectangle application to a 1e100.net subdomain. From what I can understand this domain belongs to Google.

I've reviewed the projects Internet Access Policy which only mentions the rectangleapp.com endpoint being used to make requests, for checking for new versions.

Not sure if it's a bug or a feature, but something doesn't sound right.

macOS version: Sequoia 15.5
Rectangle version: 0.87 (93)

[rxhanson]

Thanks for asking. If you have Rectangle configured to check for updates, it will check at https://rectangleapp.com for the list of available updates. I have ownership of this domain, and I use Google for hosting. If there is an update, it will then be downloaded directly from GitHub. (Rectangle uses the Sparkle library to manage this from within the app).

By doing it this way, I'm making it simpler to retain control over the update path for Rectangle, at my own cost of hosting that list of updates. This way, if for any reason GitHub was not a desirable location to host the actual updates then I can easily change it.

You can always disable the check if desired, and simply download directly from GitHub (or even build it from source :).

[diogovieira]

No problem, thanks for the quick response.

By doing it this way, I'm making it simpler to retain control over the update path for Rectangle, at my own cost of hosting that list of updates. This way, if for any reason GitHub was not a desirable location to host the actual updates then I can easily change it.

I guess that makes sense. But wouldn't the fact that the Internet Access Policy of this project fails to mention that domain and what it is used for make it a bug?

[diogovieira]

Also, thank you for the work you put into this and supporting it's costs!

[rxhanson]

Thanks for the follow up. Perhaps there's a discrepancy between what Rectangle has here and what LuLu is seeing/expecting?

[diogovieira]

Yes, the host I saw in Lulu's prompt was a subdomain of 1e100.net, not rectangleapp.com.

[rxhanson]

Looks like 1e100.net is Google's CDN so it would make sense that rectangleapp.com could resolve to that, but it's interesting that Lulu would see it this way. I'll have to read up on how Lulu works.