gbar

Your whole GitHub life, one glance away in the macOS menu bar.
Pull requests, issues, CI, notifications and quick actions, without opening a browser tab.

Quickstart · Features · Install · Build · Auth · License

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gbar puts everything you track on GitHub (pull requests, issues, CI status, notifications and quick actions) into your macOS menu bar, one glance away. A general GitHub bar, not just a PR list. Free to run, self-host and modify; source-available under PolyForm Shield.

Why gbar

• Glanceable. What needs you (PRs awaiting your review, failing CI, new review requests) reads straight from the menu bar, no window required.
• Broader than PRs. Issues, checks, notifications, starred repos, a per-repo watchlist and arbitrary saved searches, not just an assigned-PR list.
• Yours to run. OAuth device flow or a PAT, tokens in the Keychain, no backend. Every feature, no limits; source-available, no lock-in.

Quickstart

brew install --cask jaylann/tap/gbar

Launch gbar, click Sign in with GitHub (or paste a token), and it lands in your menu bar. See Install for the DMG and Authentication for the self-host setup.

Features

🔀 Pull requests Created / assigned / review-requested / mentioned, with author, approvals, +/− line counts and age.	🐛 Issues Created / assigned / mentioned, alongside your PRs in one place.
✅ Rich CI / checks Per-check pass / fail / pending status surfaced on each PR.	⚡ Quick actions Open in browser, approve, merge, mark notifications read, all from the menu.
🔔 Desktop notifications New PRs, review requests assigned to you, and status changes.	⭐ Starred signal A star marker on any row whose repo you've starred, plus a cross-tab "Starred" filter.
👁 Watchlist → Actions & Releases Curated owner/name repos feed a workflow-runs tab and a "what shipped" releases digest.	🔎 Custom saved queries Any GitHub search string becomes its own menu section.
🏢 Multiple accounts, orgs & Enterprise Point it at any API base URL, including GitHub Enterprise.	🎛 Configurable Poll interval and a menu-bar badge with live counts.

See docs/PRODUCT.md for the full scope and roadmap.

Install

The signed, notarized build (opens with no Gatekeeper prompt) is on the Homebrew tap:

brew install --cask jaylann/tap/gbar

Or grab the .dmg from the latest release.

Build from source

just bootstrap   # wire git hooks + materialize local xcconfigs
just gen         # tuist install + generate the Xcode project
just build       # build the macOS app
just run         # build and launch

Authentication

gbar is free to run, self-host and modify: every feature, no limits, no account. Authentication uses GitHub's OAuth device flow, which needs only a public client ID: no server, no secret. Your tokens live in the macOS Keychain, never on disk in plaintext.

Register your own GitHub OAuth App in ~2 minutes and paste its client ID into Settings once, or skip that and use a personal access token. Full walkthrough: docs/SELF-HOST.md.

Stack

SwiftUI (MenuBarExtra, LSUIElement agent) · macOS 14+ · Swift 6 (strict concurrency) · Tuist · SwiftFormat + SwiftLint · just.

Conventions

• Branches: stage is the working branch; main is release/tag-only.
• Commits: Conventional Commits, enforced by a local commit-msg hook and the pr-title CI check.
• Lint/format: just check (SwiftFormat + SwiftLint). Run before pushing.

License

Source-available under the PolyForm Shield License 1.0.0. You may use, self-host, modify and redistribute gbar freely, but not to build a product or service that competes with gbar. This is not an OSI-approved license, and that's deliberate: source-available, on purpose, so the project can't simply be repackaged and resold out from under it.