ContainerMenuBar

A lightweight, read-only macOS menu-bar monitor for Apple's container runtime. It shows your containers, volumes, and networks at a glance — live stats, ports, mounts, IPs, and more — without ever mutating runtime state.

Unofficial project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple. It observes the installed container CLI as an external process; it does not link Apple's container Swift package and does not run a background helper service.

Screenshots

Containers	Volumes	Networks

Features

• Containers — running state, image, CPU %, memory, network/block I/O, process count, published ports, command, resource limits, networks, IP addresses, mounts, and labels. Plus an on-demand logs viewer (last 200 lines, with a --boot toggle for VM/kernel init output).
• Images — name/tag, on-disk size, platform, short digest, and age; detail panel adds the full digest, entrypoint, command, exposed ports, env, and layer count.
• Volumes — driver, format, size, and source path; select one to inspect for the full mount path, options, labels, and creation date.
• Networks — mode, subnet, gateway, and plugin; select one to inspect for the IPv6 subnet and labels, with an attached-containers deep-link.
• Disk usage — a header widget summarizing images/containers/volumes on-disk usage (system df).
• Menu-bar glance — running/total count without opening the window.
• Efficient polling — the expensive stats call is skipped on background polls unless the container set changes; 5 s when open, 30 s when closed.
• Resilient parsing — defends against CLI output shape drift and degrades to the last good snapshot on error.

Requirements

• macOS 13 (Ventura) or later, Apple silicon recommended.
• Apple container installed and on a standard path (/usr/local/bin, /opt/homebrew/bin, /usr/bin, or PATH). Start it with container system start.
• To build from source: a Swift 5.9+ toolchain (Xcode 15+ / Command Line Tools).

Install

Download the DMG (recommended)

1. Download ContainerMenuBar-<version>.dmg from the latest release.
2. Open the DMG and drag ContainerMenuBar into Applications.
3. Launch it from Applications or Spotlight.

The running version is shown in the window header and in Finder → Get Info.

Gatekeeper: notarized releases open with a double-click. If a build is not yet notarized, the first launch shows a warning — right-click the app → Open → Open. See SECURITY.md.

Build and install from source

git clone https://github.com/hurryingauto3/container-mb.git
cd container-mb
make install      # builds a release bundle and copies it to /Applications
make dmg          # or build a distributable dist/ContainerMenuBar-<version>.dmg

Quick start

1. Install container and start it: container system start (see apple/container).
2. Install ContainerMenuBar from the DMG (above).
3. Click the box icon (ctr N) in the menu bar to open the dashboard, then use the segmented control to switch between Containers, Images, Volumes, and Networks. It refreshes automatically; the refresh button forces an update.

Usage

make build        # swift build
make test         # run the smoke-test suite
make run          # build and launch the app
make package      # build a signed dist/ContainerMenuBar.app
make dmg          # build a distributable dist/ContainerMenuBar-<version>.dmg
make install      # package and copy to /Applications
make clean

It is a menu-bar app: look for the box icon in the top-right menu bar (it shows ctr <running>). Click it to open the dashboard; switch between Containers, Images, Volumes, and Networks with the segmented control.

Versioning

The version is defined once in Sources/ContainerCore/AppVersion.swift and flows into the bundle's CFBundleShortVersionString, the in-app header, and the git release tag. The project follows Semantic Versioning and a Keep a Changelog-style CHANGELOG.md.

Architecture

See CLAUDE.md for a detailed map. In short: a UI-free ContainerCore library (models, CLI client, polling) drives a thin AppKit/SwiftUI shell. The CLI is treated as the stable API boundary; all parsing is centralized and defensive.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — please read CONTRIBUTING.md and our Code of Conduct.

Security

Found a vulnerability? Please follow the process in SECURITY.md; do not open a public issue for security reports.

License

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See NOTICE for attribution.