This Mac Firewall troubleshooting guide is designed to aid users of FSWidgets products who may have a system that is not allowing communication between our apps and the simulator (X-Plane or Aerofly FS).
The purpose of this guide is to delete or clear any existing Firewall Rules for the FSWidgets Connect plugin or the sim itself, and to force a new Mac Security Alert. This will refresh these settings completely and solves 99% of the cases reported to us.
Before you start, please make sure you have installed the FSWidgets Connect plugin for X-Plane. Aerofly FS has FSWidgets Connect built in to the sim and does not require any additional plugin
First, click on the macOS System Settings icon in your dock and navigate to the following panel:
System Settings > Network > Firewall > Options buttonOlder versions of macOS:
Preferences > Security & Privacy > Firewall > Firewall Options buttonClick on the entry for X-Plane or Aerofly FS (there may be more than one).
Click the minus button to remove that entry (remove all that begin with "X-Plane" or "Aerofly FS").
Note: Make sure the option called Block all incoming connections is not selected. This will block all connections automatically and will not alert you to when X-Plane needs access to the local network.
Note: It is recommended that the option Automatically allow downloaded signed software to receive incoming connections is turned on.
Finally, launch X-Plane or Aerofly FS.
When you do you will receive a Mac Security Alert asking Do you want the application to accept incoming network connections?
Please click Allow.
Try connecting again from your device using the IP address and port number shown on the FSWidgets Connect plugin panel in X-Plane:
For Aerofly FS users, please consult our dedicated help file on how to get the correct IP address:
http://fswidgets.com/docs/help/aerofly_fs2/index.html