LlamaWatch

A tiny macOS menu bar app that keeps an eye on Ollama.

I wanted to see if Ollama was running and easily stop it. The current Ollama desktop app doesn't do this from the status bar, which is what this lightweight app aims to solve.

Features

• Live status — three distinct states at a glance:

  SF Symbol	State
  eye.fill	Running — Ollama is idle
  eye.circle.fill	Generating — Ollama is actively processing a request
  eye.slash	Stopped — Ollama is not running

• Generation detection — detects active inference by monitoring TCP connections to Ollama's port
• Loaded models — shows which models are currently in memory and their VRAM usage
• Eject models — click any loaded model to unload it and free up memory
• Start / Stop — toggle the Ollama service directly from the menu bar (via brew services)
• Lightweight — a single Swift file, no Xcode project, no dependencies, no frameworks beyond AppKit

Screenshot

Requirements

• macOS 13+
• Ollama installed via Homebrew (brew install ollama)

Install

Download (recommended)

1. Download LlamaWatch.zip from the latest release
2. Unzip and drag LlamaWatch.app to /Applications/

Build from source

Requires Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install).

git clone https://github.com/L3G/LlamaWatch.git
cd LlamaWatch
make install

To uninstall:

make uninstall

Start at Login

To have LlamaWatch launch automatically, add it in System Settings > General > Login Items.

How It Works

LlamaWatch polls the system process list every 3 seconds to detect whether Ollama is running, and queries Ollama's local API (localhost:11434/api/ps) to list loaded models. Active generation is detected by monitoring established TCP connections to Ollama's port (11434) — when an external client has an open connection, the app switches to the "Generating" state. Stopping and starting Ollama is handled through brew services to properly manage the launchd service.

The entire app is a single main.swift file compiled with swiftc into a minimal .app bundle. No SwiftUI, no storyboards, no Xcode project — just AppKit and a shell script.

Disclaimer

LlamaWatch is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with the Ollama team in any way.

License

MIT