Claude Usage Bar

Have you ever found yourself refreshing the Claude usage page, wondering how close you are to hitting your rate limit? Yeah, I've been there too. So I built this.

Now it's just a glimpse away — always sitting at the top of your screen.

What it does

A tiny macOS menu bar app that shows your Claude API usage at a glance. Click it for the full picture:

• Menu bar icon with a mini dual-bar showing 5-hour and 7-day utilization
• Detailed popover with per-window usage and reset timers
• Usage history chart — see how your usage evolves over time (1h / 6h / 1d / 7d / 30d)
• Hover over the chart to see exact values at any point
• Just sign in — OAuth via browser, no API keys to manage
• Zero dependencies — pure SwiftUI, Swift Charts, and Foundation

Install

Download

1. Download ClaudeUsageBar.zip from the latest release
2. Extract and drag ClaudeUsageBar.app to /Applications
3. On first launch: right-click the app → Open (required for ad-hoc signed apps)

Build from source

Requires Xcode 15+ / Swift 5.9+ and macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.

git clone https://github.com/Blimp-Labs/claude-usage-bar.git
cd claude-usage-bar
make app            # build .app bundle
make install        # copy to /Applications

Usage

1. Launch the app — a menu bar icon appears
2. Click the icon → Sign in with Claude → authorize in your browser
3. Paste the code back into the app
4. The icon updates every 60 seconds with your current utilization

Click the icon anytime to see:

• 5-hour and 7-day usage with progress bars and reset timers
• Usage history chart with adjustable time range and hover details

Data storage

All data is stored locally in ~/.config/claude-usage-bar/:

File	Purpose
token	OAuth access token (permissions: 0600)
history.json	Usage history for the chart (30-day retention)

History is buffered in memory and flushed to disk every 5 minutes and on app quit. No data is sent anywhere other than the Anthropic API.

Development

make build          # release build only
make app            # build + create .app bundle
make zip            # build + bundle + zip for distribution
make install        # build + install to /Applications
make clean          # remove build artifacts

Project structure

Sources/ClaudeUsageBar/
├── ClaudeUsageBarApp.swift      # App entry point, menu bar setup
├── UsageService.swift           # OAuth, polling, API calls
├── UsageModel.swift             # API response types
├── UsageHistoryModel.swift      # History data types, time ranges
├── UsageHistoryService.swift    # Persistence, downsampling
├── UsageChartView.swift         # Swift Charts trajectory view
├── PopoverView.swift            # Main popover UI
└── MenuBarIconRenderer.swift    # Menu bar icon drawing

License

BSD 2-Clause