Discovery

What it does: finds the devices on your local network. It quietly pings every address in your subnet (a "sweep") and lists the ones that answer — your "who's on my network right now?" tool. For each device it also tries to look up a name and guess what KIND of device it is (switch, router, Wi-Fi access point, printer, phone, server, camera, PC, laptop, IoT gadget, media player), and it saves the list to Inventory so you can compare later.

What you need: just to be connected to the network you want to scan — no credentials, no setup. It scans your own local subnet (a /24, i.e. 254 addresses like 192.168.1.1–254) by default; you can point it at another range.

Safe to run: generally yes — it only sends small pings, changes nothing. But it IS active traffic, so on a monitored corporate network it can trip an "unusual scanning" alert. Only scan networks you're allowed to.

What to expect / reading results: after a few seconds you get a row per device that answered — its IP address, a name (or "—" if it has none), and a device-type icon. Two things to know: (1) a device NOT showing up doesn't prove it's off — some devices are set to ignore pings, so they're there but silent. (2) The device-type icon is a best guess from the hardware maker; it can be wrong for an unknown or privacy-randomized device, so treat it as a hint, not proof. See also Topology (the same scan drawn as a map) and ARP table (IP↔hardware-address pairs).