A macOS menu bar app that shows your real-time Claude.ai usage — no login required beyond your existing browser session.

• What it shows
• Why this exists
• Privacy and Security
• Requirements
• Install
• Manual installation
• Starting and stopping
• Updating
• Uninstall
• Troubleshooting
• Advanced
• How it works
• License

• 5-hour window — your current utilization with a progress bar and time until reset
• 7-day window — your rolling weekly utilization and next reset date
• Extra credits — dollar amount used and remaining (shown only if you have a credit balance)
• Percentage summary in the menu bar title (optional, togglable from the menu)

Data refreshes automatically every 5 minutes, or on demand via the menu.

I'm on Claude Pro and use it heavily while working on side projects. Keeping track of the 5-hour and 7-day usage limits meant constantly switching to claude.ai/settings/usage, breaking my flow every time I wanted to know how much headroom I had left.

I tried CodexBar but it was reporting my limits as fully consumed when they weren't, which made it useless for my workflow.

So I built claude-bar: a small menu bar icon that shows the real numbers straight from the Claude API, always visible, always accurate, zero clicks needed.

This section is here first because it matters most.

claude-bar reads one session cookie (sessionKey or __Secure-next-auth.session-token) from your browser's cookie store for claude.ai. That cookie is the same credential your browser already holds after you log in — claude-bar does not store it anywhere new; it reads it fresh from your browser on each launch.

It makes exactly three API calls:

1. GET https://claude.ai/api/organizations — to get your organization ID
2. GET https://claude.ai/api/organizations/{id}/usage — to fetch utilization numbers
3. GET https://api.github.com/repos/BOUSHABAMohammed/claude-bar/releases/latest — once at startup, to check for updates (no credentials sent)

You can verify all three calls yourself in claude_bar.py.

When claude-bar first runs, macOS shows a Keychain access dialog from your browser (Chrome or Safari). This is because the browser encrypts its cookie store with a key stored in your Keychain, and claude-bar — via the rookiepy library — needs to decrypt it.

Click "Always Allow" to avoid being asked again. The prompt is from your browser and macOS, not from claude-bar.

• Does not read passwords, payment details, or any cookies other than the session token
• Does not send data to any third party — the only external calls are to claude.ai and the public GitHub API (no credentials)
• Does not store your session cookie outside your browser's cookie store
• Does not have network access beyond the three endpoints listed above

• macOS 12 Monterey or later
• A paid Claude subscription (usage data is only available for Pro/Team/Enterprise plans)
• Logged in to claude.ai in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Brave, or Edge

One-liner:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BOUSHABAMohammed/claude-bar/main/install.sh | bash

What the script does (no surprises):

1. Fetches the latest release tag from the GitHub API
2. Installs uv (a fast Python package manager) if you don't have it — uv itself downloads a self-contained Python 3.12 if needed, so nothing system-wide is modified
3. Downloads the release source archive from GitHub into ~/.local/share/claude-bar/
4. Strips the macOS Gatekeeper quarantine flag (prevents "unidentified developer" errors)
5. Runs uv sync to install Python dependencies into an isolated virtual environment
6. Creates a run.sh launcher in the install directory
7. Optionally writes and loads a LaunchAgent so claude-bar starts at login

Everything is self-contained in ~/.local/share/claude-bar/. Nothing is written to system directories or /usr/local.

git clone https://github.com/BOUSHABAMohammed/claude-bar.git
cd claude-bar
uv sync --frozen --no-dev
.venv/bin/python claude_bar.py

Don't have uv? Install it with brew install uv

Quit claude-bar at any time from its menu. Because the LaunchAgent is configured to restart only on crash (not on a normal quit), it stays quit until you start it again.

Restart from the terminal:

~/.local/share/claude-bar/run.sh

Restart via launchd (if you installed the LaunchAgent):

launchctl start com.user.claude-bar

Prevent it from starting at login (without uninstalling):

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.claude-bar.plist

Re-enable start at login:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.claude-bar.plist

claude-bar checks for updates automatically at startup. When a new version is available, a notification appears at the bottom of the menu:

🆕 Update available: v1.x.x — click to open

Clicking it opens the GitHub release page in your browser. Then re-run the install command to apply the update — the script overwrites the install directory in place:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BOUSHABAMohammed/claude-bar/main/install.sh | bash

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.claude-bar.plist 2>/dev/null || true
rm -rf ~/.local/share/claude-bar ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.claude-bar.plist

The installer strips the quarantine attribute automatically. If you see this after a manual install, run:

xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine ~/.local/share/claude-bar

This means your browser session cookie has expired or been cleared. Log back in to claude.ai in your browser, then restart claude-bar.

• Make sure you are logged in to claude.ai in Chrome or Safari
• Try specifying a browser explicitly (see Advanced below)
• If you use a less common browser, try using Chrome or Safari for the Claude session

When run as a LaunchAgent, output is written to:

~/.local/share/claude-bar/claude-bar.log

When run from the terminal, output goes to stdout/stderr directly.

By default claude-bar tries Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Brave, and Edge in order. To force a specific browser:

~/.local/share/claude-bar/run.sh --browser safari
~/.local/share/claude-bar/run.sh --browser chrome
~/.local/share/claude-bar/run.sh --browser firefox
~/.local/share/claude-bar/run.sh --browser brave
~/.local/share/claude-bar/run.sh --browser edge

To persist the choice, edit ~/.local/share/claude-bar/run.sh and append --browser <name> to the last line.

claude-bar is a native macOS menu bar app built with:

• rumps — Python wrapper around AppKit's NSStatusItem
• rookiepy — reads and decrypts browser cookie stores (handles macOS Keychain decryption)
• curl-cffi — HTTP client that impersonates Chrome's TLS fingerprint for claude.ai requests

On startup it reads your session cookie, authenticates against claude.ai, and starts a 5-minute refresh timer. A background thread handles each API call so the UI stays responsive. Session expiry (HTTP 401) clears the cached session and shows a key icon; the next refresh re-reads the cookie automatically.

A separate background thread checks the GitHub releases API 5 seconds after launch and compares the remote tag against the hardcoded VERSION constant. If a newer release exists, a menu item appears at the bottom of the menu linking directly to the release page.

The menu items use NSAttributedString (via pyobjc) to render a colour-coded progress bar and dim secondary text directly inside the native menu.

MIT