Swordfish

A macOS menu bar utility built for iOS and macOS engineers — Xcode housekeeping, Simulator controls, JSON tooling, and everyday system utilities in a single popover.

Swordfish is a native SwiftUI + AppKit menu bar app that consolidates the tools an iOS/macOS developer reaches for throughout the day: simctl-driven simulator controls, push & deep-link testing, DerivedData cleanup, a side-by-side JSON viewer, a JSON → Codable struct generator, plus system utilities (anti-sleep, display brightness, CPU/fan/memory/disk monitoring, clipboard history).

Screenshots

Features

Xcode & iOS Tooling

• Delete DerivedData — One-click wipe of ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData with a live size readout
• Clean Build — Sends "Clean Build Folder" to the active Xcode workspace via osascript
• iOS Simulator — List, boot, shutdown, and delete simulators from xcrun simctl list
• Push Notification Tester — Send APNs payloads to booted simulators with Simple / Rich / Silent presets
• Deep Link Launcher — Test custom URL schemes and universal links with recent-URL history
• Simulator Recorder — Records the simulator screen to MP4/HEVC on the Desktop with a live timer
• Network Link Conditioner — Throttle the Mac's default route (and therefore the iOS Simulator) via dnctl + pfctl (dummynet). Presets: Off / Edge / 3G / DSL / LTE / 5% Loss / 100% Loss, each tile shows target bandwidth + delay. First use writes /etc/sudoers.d/swordfish-throttle so later toggles run silently.
• Color Picker — System eyedropper (NSColorSampler), editable HEX field, recent-color history, and one-click copy rows for Swift (UIColor / Color), UIKit (RGBA), and CSS snippets

JSON

• JSON Viewer — Dedicated window: raw editor on the left, a native tree (List + OutlineGroup = NSOutlineView under the hood) on the right. Paste, Format, Minify, Sort Keys, with parse-error line/column reporting.
• JSON to Struct — Generates Swift Codable structs from a JSON sample with toggles for Codable conformance and snake_case → camelCase mapping (auto-generated CodingKeys).

System (popover)

• Displays — DDC/CI brightness slider for external monitors (IOAVService) plus built-in brightness (DisplayServices.framework)
• Anti-Sleep — Caffeine-style sleep prevention with an in-place duration picker (∞ / 15m / 1h / 2h / 5h), live countdown, and absolute end time
• Hardware monitor — CPU temperature (Apple Silicon IOHID sensors), fan RPM (SMC), 12-sample sparklines, threshold-colored bars
• Memory & Storage — Live stats via host_statistics64 + URL.resourceValues, with app/wired/cache breakdown and a purge-backed Clear RAM

Clipboard

• History — Last 20 items, pinnable, filterable (All/Text/Links/Code), click to re-copy
• Quick Actions — Screenshot, Lock Screen (⌃⌘Q via System Events), Flush DNS (admin prompt), Terminal

App-level

• Launch at Login — Toggleable from the gear menu via SMAppService
• Settings menu — Quit + login toggle accessible from the popover header

Installation

1. Download the latest Swordfish.dmg from Releases
2. Open the DMG and drag Swordfish.app to your Applications folder
3. First launch: right-click Swordfish.app → Open (Gatekeeper bypass for new downloads)
4. Grant permissions as features request them (see below)

Permissions

Swordfish asks for these on first use. Everything is optional — features that require a missing permission will surface an inline error rather than fail silently.

Permission	Used by
Automation → System Events	Lock Screen (⌃⌘Q shortcut synthesis)
Admin privileges (one-time auth prompt)	Flush DNS (dscacheutil + killall -HUP mDNSResponder)
Admin privileges (one-time, writes a sudoers entry)	Network Link Conditioner — grants NOPASSWD for /usr/sbin/dnctl and /sbin/pfctl so later toggles don't prompt. Removed when the helper is uninstalled from the ••• menu.
Screen Recording	Color Picker eyedropper, Quick Screenshot

Requirements

• macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later
• Apple Silicon for the full feature set — CPU temperature reading uses the Apple Silicon IOHID sensor surface
• Intel Macs: SMC-based temperatures, fan speeds, and all non-hardware features still work; the IOHID temperature path returns nil and the UI falls back accordingly

Xcode command-line tools (xcrun simctl) are required for Simulator features.

Building from Source

Requirements:

• Xcode 15 or later
• Swift 5.9
• XcodeGen: brew install xcodegen

git clone https://github.com/akkanferhan/Swordfish.git
cd Swordfish/Swordfish
xcodegen generate
open Swordfish.xcodeproj

Run via ⌘R. First build takes ~30 seconds; incremental builds are fast.

Set SWORDFISH_MOCK_SENSORS=1 in the scheme environment to use simulated CPU/fan values (useful when working on the hardware tiles without touching real sensors).

Architecture

App/
  SwordfishApp.swift        — @main, NSApplicationDelegateAdaptor
  AppDelegate.swift         — NSStatusItem + NSPopover owner, PopoverController
  AppEnvironment.swift      — dependency wiring

Services/                   — ObservableObjects, one per feature domain
  SystemMonitor.swift       — 2s polling of all hardware + memory + disk
  HardwareSensors.swift     — IOHIDEventSystemClient + SMC wrappers
  MemoryStats.swift         — host_statistics64 wrapper (app / wired / cache)
  DiskStats.swift           — URL.resourceValues-based volume capacity
  DisplayController.swift   — CGDisplay enumeration, brightness debounce
  DisplayBrightness.swift   — DisplayServices (dlopen) + IOAVService DDC/CI
  CaffeineService.swift     — IOPMAssertion-based anti-sleep
  ClipboardService.swift    — NSPasteboard changeCount polling
  SimulatorService.swift    — xcrun simctl wrapper
  NetworkThrottleService.swift — dnctl + pfctl dummynet, sudoers helper
  LoginItemManager.swift    — SMAppService
  JSONToSwift.swift         — recursive Swift struct generator
  DevToolsState.swift       — shared state across DevKit tools (picked color, etc.)

Views/
  Popover/                  — status-item popover shell
  SystemHub/                — displays, anti-sleep, hardware tiles
  DevKit/                   — Xcode tools + simulator + launch rows
  Productivity/             — clipboard + quick actions
  JSONViewer/               — standalone JSON Viewer window
  JSONToSwift/              — standalone Struct Generator window
  Shared/                   — ExpandableSection, LaunchSection, Sparkline, Badge

DesignSystem/               — Theme, Typography, Spacing, Motion, Radius

Utilities/                  — ProcessRunner, AppVersion (Bundle helpers)

Services are the source of truth. Views never talk to IOKit or shell directly — they go through the corresponding service, which makes mocking and unit testing straightforward.

Private APIs

Swordfish uses a handful of private / undocumented Apple APIs because there is no public alternative:

• DisplayServices.framework — built-in display brightness control (DisplayServicesSetBrightness / DisplayServicesGetBrightness). Loaded via dlopen.
• IOAVService (+ IOAVServiceWriteI2C) — DDC/CI VCP writes to external monitors.
• IOHIDEventSystemClient — Apple Silicon PMU temperature sensors (matched via 0xFF00 usage page).

These are declared with @_silgen_name and called directly. Using them precludes Mac App Store distribution — which is a conscious tradeoff. The app targets developers who install tools from GitHub, and the public alternatives would gut the app's value.

Inspired patterns: MonitorControl for DDC, Stats for IOHID sensor enumeration.

Development Workflow

Swordfish follows a master / develop / feature/* branching model:

• master holds only released builds (tagged v*)
• develop is the integration branch — every feature lands here via a merge commit (--no-ff)
• Feature work branches off develop as feature/<slug> and merges back via PR

Browse git log --graph develop to see how each feature was built and integrated.

License

MIT — do whatever you want, no warranty.