Janus 1.2.0

Added

• Every stop, restart, "Stop all" and "Open in terminal" ends in a short status line in the popover: stopped, restarted (with the new PID), relaunched but not listening yet, the port taken by another process, not allowed, or still running.
• A notice when a scan fails ("Couldn't read ports · retrying"): the list shown may be out of date.
• "Show system processes" option in the popover footer (off by default) to list the processes the noise filter hides.
• Restart relaunches the command with the process's own environment variables (e.g. PORT), not only its arguments and folder.
• Opt-in end-to-end test that restarts real servers (python, node, npm run dev, a wrapper script); README image of the popover.

Changed

• Stop and restart wait for the process to actually exit (polling instead of fixed delays) and the row shows a spinner until the action ends.

Security

• The process identity (owner and start time) is captured at scan time: stop and restart leave a PID alone if it now belongs to a different process.
• Exited processes awaiting collection (zombies) count as gone.

Install

Download Janus-1.2.0-mac.zip, unzip and drag Janus.app to Applications. Janus is not notarized by Apple: on macOS 15 or later open it once, then go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway (macOS 14: right-click > Open). Or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Janus.app.

Full changelog: v1.1.0...v1.2.0

Janus 1.1.0

Changed

• New brand (icon, menu bar symbol): Janus mark 1.3, the "passage" symbol (a doorway arch cut by the horizon), drawn in code. The app icon is the white symbol on a black rounded square, in the style of Thoth (icon/gen_icon.swift); the menu bar shows the symbol as a template image instead of the globe; the popover header shows the symbol and the JANUS wordmark.
• Redesigned interface, in the style of Thoth: one Theme for the light and dark palettes, type scale, spacing and cards; a header with the Janus mark and the number of listening ports in large type; hairlines between project groups; ports and PIDs in a monospaced font; row actions shown on hover, with tooltips and accessibility labels. Green and red only mark a live port and destructive actions, and every text color meets WCAG AA contrast in both themes.
• Port scans run on a background task; the menu bar UI never waits for lsof.
• Listening sockets come from a single lsof call, executed directly (no intermediate shell).
• Working directories are read natively (proc_pidinfo) instead of a second lsof call.
• Project roots are cached per directory between scans; the port list is only republished when it actually changes, and the polling timer allows the system to coalesce wakeups. Measured idle cost dropped from about 2.8% to 1.7% of one CPU core (app plus child processes).
• "Stop all" now asks for confirmation and signals each process once.
• Favorites migration from LocalPorts reads the old preferences through the system (cfprefsd) instead of the raw .plist file.
• Tailscale (IPNExtension) is hidden by the noise filter.
• User-visible text is localized in English and Portuguese (pt-PT).

Fixed

• The in-app "Restart" button could leave no Janus running: the new copy saw the old one still alive and quit itself.
• Command output larger than 64 KB could hang a scan (pipe was read only after the process exited).
• A failed lsof run no longer blanks the port list; the last known list is kept.
• The "Launch at login" checkbox reverts to the real state when macOS refuses the change.

Security

• Kill and restart only act on processes owned by the current user, never on launchd or Janus itself.
• The whole process group is only signalled when safe: never kill(-1), never Janus's own group, another user's group or a group led by an .app (for example an editor that spawned the dev server).
• The delayed SIGKILL checks that the PID still belongs to the same process, so a reused PID is never hit.

Removed

• Screenshot from the README and the unused docs/screenshot.png.

Install

Download Janus-1.1.0-mac.zip, unzip and drag Janus.app to Applications. Janus is not notarized by Apple: on macOS 15 or later open it once, then go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway (macOS 14: right-click > Open). Or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Janus.app.

Full changelog: v1.0.0...v1.1.0

v1.0.0

Full Changelog: v1.1.3...v1.0.0

v1.1.3

Full Changelog: v1.1.2...v1.1.3

v1.1.2

Full Changelog: v1.1.1...v1.1.2