January 8, 2026
Green lights, X-red flags
Show HN: macOS menu bar app to track Claude usage in real time
New Mac app shows your AI usage; fans cheer while others shout “just use CodexBar”
TLDR: A new macOS menu bar app tracks Claude usage in real time with color alerts and reset timers, but it relies on an undocumented API. Commenters loved the simplicity, pointed to CodexBar as a bigger alternative, and ignited a mini–culture war over “Follow me on X,” demanding non-X social options.
Claude Usage, a tiny Mac menu bar app that shows your Claude Code limits in green–yellow–red, dropped on Show HN and the crowd had feelings. It auto-refreshes, tells you when your limits reset, and keeps your login private. The catch? It taps an undocumented Anthropic API, which adds a little thrill—and a tiny panic—to the vibe. Early adopters loved the simplicity: one user immediately set it to run at login, calling it a “traffic light for my AI habit.” Another wondered if this is the perfect starter template to “vibe code” their own menu bar tool, asking if they even need a template at all.
Then the drama arrived: a commenter dropped CodexBar (with 1.7k GitHub stars) as the bigger, shinier alternative that supports multiple services. Cue the classic showdown—single-purpose, super-lightweight gizmo vs. one app to monitor them all. But the spiciest thread wasn’t about code; it was about social media. A “Follow me on X” line sparked immediate pushback, with people begging for literally anything not named “Xitter.” The mood: we adore the app, we hate the platform. Meanwhile, the undocumented API warning became the ominous footnote—users joked it’s like watching a countdown to “will it break today?” Show HN energy at its finest: fast, useful, and gloriously messy.
Key Points
- •Claude Usage is a macOS menubar app that displays Claude Code session and weekly usage limits in real time.
- •It features auto-refresh every two minutes, color-coded thresholds (green, yellow >70%, red >90%), and reset timers.
- •The app requires macOS 13+ and the Claude Code CLI installed and logged in via npm and the claude command.
- •It reads OAuth credentials from macOS Keychain and queries an Anthropic usage endpoint that is undocumented and may change.
- •The project is open source under the MIT License, with no telemetry, and offers troubleshooting and contribution guidelines.