Development category
Development menu bar apps
Development menu bar apps for macOS. 15 listed: 10 free, 1 free with a paid upgrade and 4 paid. Of those, 4 open source and 2 with a free trial. Prices and trials as the developers state them.
15 apps
- About PokeTokenBar
PokeTokenBar, opens the developer's site in a new tab Raise Pokémon With Your AI Token Usage
A free, open-source macOS menu bar app that turns your AI coding token usage into a Pokémon-raising game. Reads local Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini CLI logs to show today's usage, 5-hour and weekly limits, all 100% locally.
Free - About Agent Island
Agent Island, opens the developer's site in a new tab Status Companion for Claude Code & Codex
A free, open-source macOS menu bar status companion for Claude Code and Codex. Live agent state, quota/cost countdowns, attention alerts, and auto-resume for trusted sessions. Native SwiftUI, local-first, no account or telemetry.
Free - About Back
Back, opens the developer's site in a new tab Know the Moment an AI Outage Ends
Watches the AI services you depend on from the menu bar and tells you the moment an outage is over, so you can stop refreshing a status page and get on with something else.
Paid - About VibeMenu
VibeMenu, opens the developer's site in a new tab Keep Your Mac Awake While Coding Agents Work
Prevents Mac sleep while Claude Code, Codex, or ChatGPT Work is active and releases the hold when work finishes, showing session state, usage limits, approval alerts, and thermal pressure.
Free - About Mimir
Mimir, opens the developer's site in a new tab Every AI Coding Quota in Your Menu Bar
Tracks AI coding quotas for Claude, Codex, Gemini, and Antigravity in one popover, with live limits, reset countdowns, and colour-coded status dots, read entirely on your own machine. Open source under the MIT licence, macOS 14+.
Free - About Belay
Belay, opens the developer's site in a new tab
Keeps your Mac awake while AI coding agents work, then lets it sleep the moment they finish. Auto-detects Claude Code, Codex, Copilot CLI and Cline; free, no telemetry, 7 languages.
Free - About TokenTracker
TokenTracker , also on the App Store , opens the developer's site in a new tab Keep AI work in view.
A native Mac menu bar app for Claude Code, Codex and other AI coding tools. View agent activity, receive alerts from supported hooks, and filter local token usage by tool, model and project with CSV export. macOS 14+. Seven-day trial, then a CNY 9.9 one-time license for up to 3 Macs.
Paid 7-day trial - About UseReserve
UseReserve, opens the developer's site in a new tab Claude & Codex Usage in Your Menu Bar
UseReserve is a free, simple, lightweight macOS menu bar app that shows your remaining Claude and Codex usage at a glance. Built for developers who are tired of constantly checking their AI usage limits.
Free - About FlareBar
FlareBar , also on the App Store , opens the developer's site in a new tab Cloudflare Dashboard in Your Mac Menu Bar
Access your Cloudflare dashboard from the menu bar. Jump to any page instantly.
Freemium - About Honey for Mac
Honey for Mac, opens the developer's site in a new tab Honey for Mac: reduce token waste across AI coding agents from the menu bar
Install Honey across supported AI coding agents and track estimated token, cost, and CO2 savings locally from the Mac menu bar.
Free - About SnipperApp 3
SnipperApp 3 , also on the App Store , opens the developer's site in a new tab Stop digging through old projects, scattered Gists, and random text files.
The AI-ready code snippet manager for macOS. Built with Swift 6 and SwiftUI, featuring MCP integration for Claude and Cursor, plus a Raycast extension.
$29.99 7-day trial - About Usage Battery for Claude Code
Usage Battery for Claude Code , also on the App Store , opens the developer's site in a new tab Live Claude Code Usage Tracker for Mac Menu Bar
A lightweight macOS menu bar app that tracks Claude Code usage limits in real time with live battery-style indicators for sessions, usage, and model limits.
$0.99 - About QuotaTempo
QuotaTempo, opens the developer's site in a new tab Local-first macOS menu bar app to track and pace Codex and Claude weekly AI usage.
QuotaTempo is a free, MIT-licensed macOS menu-bar app that compares weekly Codex and Claude capacity with the even-use target for the current moment.
Free - About Macsmith
Macsmith, opens the developer's site in a new tab Your developer tools. One Mac app.
Install packages, manage local services, and find what is using a port. Twenty familiar tools in one native Mac app.
Free - About UsageBeacon
UsageBeacon, opens the developer's site in a new tab Native macOS menu bar budget runway for Cursor, Claude, and extensible AI usage providers
Track Cursor, Claude, and Codex usage, budgets, and resets in your Mac menu bar, widgets, or floating HUD.
Free
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.
15 listed: 10 free, 1 free with a paid upgrade and 4 paid. Of those, 4 open source and 2 with a free trial.
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.