Bonjour is

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

's implementation of

zero-configuration networking Zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) is a set of technologies that automatically creates a usable computer network based on the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) when computers or network peripherals are interconnected. It does not require manu ...

(zeroconf), a group of technologies that includes

service discovery Service discovery is the process of automatically detecting devices and services on a computer network. This reduces the need for manual configuration by users and administrators. A service discovery protocol (SDP) is a network protocol that hel ...

, address assignment, and hostname resolution. Bonjour locates devices such as printers, other computers, and the services that those devices offer on a

local network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...

using multicast Domain Name System (mDNS) service records. The software comes built-in with Apple's

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

operating systems. Bonjour can also be installed onto computers running

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. Bonjour components may also be included within other software such as

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

and

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

. After its introduction in 2002 with

Mac OS X 10.2 Mac OS X Jaguar (version 10.2) is the third major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It superseded Mac OS X 10.1 and preceded Mac OS X Panther. The operating system was released on August 23, 2002 either for sin ...

as Rendezvous, the software was renamed in 2005 to Bonjour following an out-of-court trademark dispute settlement.

Overview

Bonjour provides a general method to discover services on a

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...

. The software is widely used throughout macOS, and allows users to set up a network without any configuration. it is used to find printers and file-sharing servers. Notable applications using Bonjour include: *

to find shared music *

iPhoto iPhoto is a discontinued digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. It was included with every Macintosh personal computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application. Originally so ...

to find shared photos *

iChat iChat (previously iChat AV) is a discontinued instant messaging software application developed by Apple Inc. for use on its Mac OS X operating system. It supported instant text messaging over XMPP/Jingle or OSCAR ( AIM) protocol, audio and video ...

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

Creative Suite 3 Adobe Creative Suite (CS) is a discontinued software suite of graphic design, video editing, and web development application software, applications developed by Adobe Systems. The last of the Creative Suite versions, Adobe Creative Suite 6 (CS6) ...

, Proteus,

Adium Adium is a free and open source instant messaging client for macOS that supports multiple IM networks, including Google Talk and XMPP. In the past, it has also supported AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. Adium is written usi ...

Fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition ...

Pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

, Vine Server, and

Elgato Elgato is a brand of consumer technology products. The brand was manufactured and designed by Elgato Systems, founded in 2010 by Markus Fest and was headquartered in Munich, Germany, until 2018 when the brand was sold to Corsair. History ...

EyeTV to communicate with multiple clients *

Gizmo5 Gizmo5 (formerly known as Gizmo Project and SIPphone) was a voice over IP communications network and a proprietary freeware soft phone for that network. On November 12, 2009, Google announced that it had acquired Gizmo5. On March 4, 2011, Google ...

to find other users on the local network *

TiVo TiVo ( ) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by Xperi (previously by TiVo Corporation and TiVo Inc.) and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose fea ...

Desktop to find digital video recorders and shared-media libraries (deprecated, unsupported c. 2013) *

SubEthaEdit SubEthaEdit is a collaborative real-time editor designed for Mac OS X. The name comes from the Sub-Etha communication network in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series. History SubEthaEdit was first released under the name Hydra in earl ...

to find document collaborators *

Solidworks SolidWorks is a solid modeling computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) application published by Dassault Systèmes. According to the publisher, over two million engineers and designers at more than 165,000 companies we ...

and PhotoView 360 used for managing licenses * Things and

OmniFocus OmniFocus is a personal task manager by the Omni Group for macOS and iOS. The declared goal of the program is to be able to capture thoughts and ideas into to do lists. The program uses concepts and techniques described in the book and producti ...

to synchronize projects and tasks across the Mac desktop and the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch *

to find local web servers and configuration pages for local devices Software such as

Bonjour Browser Bonjour is Apple's implementation of zero-configuration networking (zeroconf), a group of technologies that includes service discovery, address assignment, and hostname resolution. Bonjour locates devices such as printers, other computers, and ...

iStumbler iStumbler is a utility for finding wireless networks and devices with AirPort- or Bluetooth-enabled Macintosh computers. iStumbler was originally based on MacStumbler source code. Its early development focused on detection of open wireless (80 ...

, both for macOS, can be used to view all services declared by these applications. Apple's "Remote" application for iPhone and iPod Touch also uses Bonjour to establish connection to iTunes libraries via Wi-Fi. Bonjour only works within a single

broadcast domain A broadcast domain is a logical division of a computer network, in which all nodes can reach each other by broadcast at the data link layer. A broadcast domain can be within the same LAN segment or it can be bridged to other LAN segments. In t ...

, which is usually a small area, without special DNS configuration. macOS, Bonjour for Windows and

AirPort An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface ...

Base Stations may be configured to use Wide Area Bonjour which allows for wide area service discovery via an appropriately configured DNS server. Applications generally implement Bonjour services using standard

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

calls, rather than in the operating system. Although macOS provides various Bonjour services, Bonjour also works on other operating systems. Apple has made the source code of the Bonjour

multicast In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused with ...

DNS responder, the core component of service discovery, available as a Darwin

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

project. The project provides source code to build the responder daemon for a wide range of platforms, including

Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the ninth major release of Apple Inc., Apple's classic Mac OS operating system which was succeeded by macOS, Mac OS X (renamed to OS X in 2011 and macOS in 2016) in 2001. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "T ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

, *BSD,

Solaris Solaris may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...

VxWorks VxWorks is a real-time operating system (or RTOS) developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aptiv. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems requiring real-time, determin ...

, and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. Apple also provides a user-installable set of services called Bonjour for Windows and Java libraries.

Licensing

Bonjour is released under a terms-of-limited-use license by Apple. It is

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

for clients, though developers and software companies who wish to redistribute it as part of a software package or use the Bonjour logo may need a

licensing agreement A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

. The source code for mDNSResponder is available under the Apache License.

Naming

Apple originally introduced the Bonjour software in August 2002 as part of

under the name "Rendezvous". On August 27, 2003 Tibco Software Inc announced that it had filed a lawsuit for trademark infringement. Tibco had an

enterprise application integration Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the use of software and computer systems' architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications. Overview Enterprise application integration is an integration framework comp ...

product called

TIBCO Rendezvous TIBCO Rendezvous is a software product that provides a message bus for enterprise application integration (EAI). Details TIBCO provides messaging APIs in C, C++, Java, Visual Basic, Perl and .NET to provide messaging between two or more serv ...

on the market since 1994 and stated that it had tried to come to an agreement with Apple Computer. In July 2004 Apple Computer and Tibco reached an out-of-court settlement; specifics of the settlement were not released to the public. On April 12, 2005, Apple announced the renaming of Rendezvous to "Bonjour". The current name ''Bonjour'' is French for the morning or afternoon greeting, "good day". The previous name ''Rendezvous'' is French for "meeting", "appointment" or "date".

Other implementations

Bonjour version 2.0, released on February 24, 2010, works with Microsoft Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10. Systems use it primarily to facilitate the installation, configuration, and use of network printers, and thus it runs from startup. When Bonjour is fully implemented on Windows, some features—such as iChat—allow for communication between Windows and Mac OS. Bonjour for Windows also adds

zeroconf Zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) is a set of technologies that automatically creates a usable computer network based on the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) when computers or network peripherals are interconnected. It does not require manu ...

capabilities to

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

, and provides a zeroconf implementation to

Java VM A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describe ...

s. Some third-party applications, such as

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

's Photoshop CS3 suite, also come bundled with Bonjour to take advantage of zeroconf technology. Installers on Windows systems normally place Bonjour files in a folder called "Bonjour" within the "Program Files" folder. It modifies Windows system-registry entries related to internal network configuration and operation. Bonjour runs as mDNSResponder.exe. Communications across the network take place over UDP port 5353, which may require reconfiguring some personal or corporate firewalls that block Bonjour packets. A full installation of Bonjour for Windows will include a plug-in for Internet Explorer, a printer wizard, and the network communication services. Not all components are included when installed as part of a third-party application or as a component of other Apple software such as iTunes. Some

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

clients are configured so that local network services are unavailable to a computer when VPN software is active and connected. In such a case no local zeroconf services are available to Bonjour or any other zeroconf implementation. In September 2008, two security vulnerabilities were found in Bonjour for Windows. Certain installations of Bonjour for Windows lack an

uninstaller An uninstaller, also called a deinstaller, is a variety of utility software designed to remove other software or parts of it from a computer. It is the opposite of an installer. Uninstallers are useful primarily when software components are install ...

and do not display a human-readable entry in the

Windows service In Windows NT operating systems, a Windows service is a computer program that operates in the background. It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon. A Windows service must conform to the interface rules and protocols of the Service Control Manager ...

s listing. In 32- and 64-bit releases of Windows 7, some older but still available versions of Bonjour services can disable all network connectivity by adding an entry of 0.0.0.0 as the

default gateway A default gateway is the node in a computer network using the Internet protocol suite that serves as the forwarding host ( router) to other networks when no other route specification matches the destination IP address of a packet. Role A gateway ...

. This was a bug reported in 2013. The open-source IM clients

Kopete Kopete is a multi-protocol, free software instant messaging client released as part of the KDE Software Compilation. Although it can run in numerous environments, it was designed for and integrates with the KDE Plasma Workspaces. Kopete was star ...

and

support the Bonjour IM protocol, as does the closed-source Trillian client.

Browsers

A number of browsers allow an end-user to graphically explore the devices found using Bonjour.

Discovery / Bonjour Browser

Discovery is a

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

-licensed

application that displays all services declared using Bonjour. The program was originally called Rendezvous Browser, but changed its name in version 1.5.4 after

changed the protocol's name to Bonjour; since version 2.0, it has been renamed again, to Discovery. For certain protocols, double-clicking a list item will launch the associated helper. Version 1.5.6 was the first

universal binary The universal binary format is, in Apple parlance, a format for executable files that run natively on either PowerPC or Intel-manufactured IA-32 or Intel 64 or ARM64-based Macintosh computers. The format originated on NeXTStep as " Multi ...

release. Future versions will allow users to completely define a service, instead of relying on the author to do so. Bonjour Browser was recommended for

in ''

MacAddict ''MacLife'' (stylized as ''Mac, Life'') is an American monthly magazine published by Future US. It focuses on the Macintosh personal computer and related products, including the iPad and iPhone. It’s sold as a print product on newsstands, and ...

'' #123. Discovery is available on the Apple App Store.

JBonjourBrowser

A student research project at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

produced a Java-based system to match the functionality of Bonjour Browser, called JBonjourBrowser. JBonjourBrowser is open-source and available under the

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

. JBonjourBrowser was built to emulate the functionality of Bonjour Browser, and at the same time work on multiple platforms. It requires Apple's Bonjour Java library to run.

Bonjour Browser for Windows

A native Windows application offers similar functions to Bonjour Browser for Mac OS. Bonjour Browser for Windows is offered for free by Hobbyist Software and HandyDev Software.

mDNSBrowser

A commercial implementation called mDNSBrowser is offered by Netputing Systems Inc.

References

External links

* – Developer resources from Apple
Bonjour – Networking, simplified
– General information from Apple
Apple – Support – Bonjour
– Bonjour support from Apple

– List of officially registered Bonjour service types
Bonjour
The official Bonjour site on Mac OS Forge.
Zeroconf
– site with myriad useful links maintained by Stuart Cheshire
Hour-long talk
by Stuart Cheshire on

Talks at Google Talks at Google is a global, internal talks series hosted by Google. The talks are most often hosted for Google employees before being publicly released on their YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and s ...

about Bonjour and zeroconf (November 2, 2005)
Stuart Cheshire and Rendezvous mentioned on Daniel Smith's blog on the O'Reilly Network

Bonjour Browser for Windows
– Bonjour Browser for Windows

– An introduction to zero configuration networking, including a comparison between Bonjour/zeroconf and Universal Plug 'n' Play
mDNSBrowser website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonjour (Software) 2002 software Apple Inc. software MacOS Utilities for macOS Network protocols