claude-usage-taskbar

A TrafficMonitor plugin that displays your Claude AI usage (5-hour session and 7-day weekly) directly in the Windows taskbar.

Note

This is a maintained fork of cubicj/claude-usage-taskbar (archived July 2026). It relies on an unofficial usage endpoint that may change or rate-limit without notice — this fork mitigates that with Retry-After-aware backoff. Claude also shows usage officially in Settings > Usage; this plugin simply puts it on the taskbar.

What's new in this fork (v1.1.0)

• Model-scoped weekly limit (e.g. Fable): the 7d item renders as two stacked bars — blue for the all-models weekly limit, purple for the model-scoped one — with the value text showing the higher (binding) percentage. Parsed from the newer limits array in the usage API, so future scoped limits are picked up automatically.
• Smarter rate-limit handling: honors the server's Retry-After on HTTP 429, shows a live countdown in the tooltip, and a manual click no longer extends the backoff window.
• Thicker bars and hardened parsing of server-supplied values.

Taskbar	Hover

Prerequisites

• Windows 10/11 (x64 or x86)
• TrafficMonitor v1.85+ (download)
• Claude Code installed and authenticated (claude login)

Installation

1. Download the latest release zip for your architecture from Releases
2. Extract claude-usage-taskbar.dll into TrafficMonitor's plugins/ folder
   • To find this folder: General Settings → Plug-in manage → Open plugin directory
3. Restart TrafficMonitor
4. Right-click the taskbar window → Taskbar Window Settings → Display settings... → check 5h Usage and/or 7d Usage

Configuration

Open settings via either:

• Right-click the taskbar window → Plugin Options → Claude Usage Settings
• General Settings → Plug-in manage → select the plugin → Options

Setting	Default	Description
Credentials Path	(auto-detect)	Path to .claude/.credentials.json. Leave empty to use %USERPROFILE%\.claude\.credentials.json
Item Width	160	Display width in DPI-96 pixels (80–400)
Poll Interval	60	API poll interval in seconds (10–3600)

Settings are stored in claude-usage-taskbar.ini next to the DLL.

Usage

• Data refreshes automatically at the configured poll interval (default: 60s)
• Click the plugin item to force an immediate refresh — the display shows ... while fetching
• Hover over the item for a tooltip with reset times and error details
• When your plan has a model-scoped weekly limit (e.g. Fable), the 7d item shows two bars: blue = all models, purple = the scoped model; the number is the higher of the two, and the tooltip lists each limit separately

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
"Credentials not found"	Install Claude Code and run claude login
"Authentication failed"	Run claude login to re-authenticate
No data shown	Click the plugin item to force refresh, or check TrafficMonitor logs
Plugin not visible	Ensure DLL architecture matches TrafficMonitor (x64 vs x86)

Building from Source

Requirements: Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools (MSVC v143), C++17

This repository can be edited from WSL, but builds are Windows-native. From WSL, call the Windows MSBuild executable directly:

MSBUILDFULL='/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/BuildTools/MSBuild/Current/Bin/MSBuild.exe'

# x64
"$MSBUILDFULL" claude-usage-taskbar.vcxproj -p:Configuration=Release -p:Platform=x64 -nologo -v:minimal

# x86
"$MSBUILDFULL" claude-usage-taskbar.vcxproj -p:Configuration=Release -p:Platform=Win32 -nologo -v:minimal

Output: build/Release-x64/ or build/Release-x86/

License

MIT