Development menu bar apps

What development menu bar apps do

Developer tools in the menu bar watch something that changes while you work and would otherwise cost a browser tab: a build, a deployment, a usage figure, a service's own dashboard. The value is the glance. Something that only matters when it goes wrong should not need a window open all day.

A number you have to go and look at is a number you look at too late. In the menu bar it is either fine or it is not, and you find out without stopping.

10 listed: 7 free, 1 free with a paid upgrade and 2 paid. Of those, 4 open source.

What to compare

• Where the credentials go. Anything reading a service on your behalf needs a token. Worth knowing whether it is stored in the Keychain, what scope it asks for, and whether the token ever leaves your machine.
• How often it asks. A tool polling an API every few seconds costs you rate limit and battery. The considerate ones back off when nothing is happening.
• Whether the source is readable. A fair number of these are open source, which for a tool holding a token is worth more than it is elsewhere. The open source ones are collected at /open-source.
• What it does when the service is down. The failure mode matters more here than the happy path. An icon that quietly stops updating is worse than one that says it cannot reach anything.

Questions

Are these open source?

Several are, and each listing says so where the developer publishes the source. The full list across every category is at /open-source.

Will one of these hold my API key safely?

That depends on the app and it is a fair thing to ask before installing. The Keychain is where a Mac app should keep a token. Where an app is open source you can check for yourself, which is a large part of why so many tools of this kind are.

What is a menu bar app?

An app that lives in the strip along the top of the screen instead of the Dock. It has an icon there, and clicking it drops down a small window. Most have no main window at all, so they stay out of the way until you want them and never appear when you switch apps.

Do menu bar apps slow a Mac down?

Each one is a running process, so a dozen of them is a dozen processes. Most sit idle and cost close to nothing. The ones worth watching are those doing work when you are not looking: reading the screen, polling a server, or watching every file you save. Activity Monitor will tell you which is which on your own machine.

My menu bar is full. What then?

macOS drops icons that no longer fit, and on a Mac with a notch there is less room than there looks. Holding Command and dragging rearranges them, so the ones you use can be kept to the left of the crowd. There are also apps whose whole job is hiding and grouping the rest, listed here under Utilities.