CodexBar: AI Usage Monitoring for Your Menu Bar
CodexBar is a macOS menu bar app that stops you getting blindsided by an AI coding provider's rate limit mid-task. It reads usage straight from each provider's own OAuth token, browser cookie, or CLI credential, and counts down to the next reset for every provider you enable. Reach for it if you run two or more AI coding subscriptions at once; skip it if you're on one provider whose own dashboard already tells you enough.
Monitor Your AI Coding Limits with CodexBar
CodexBar is a macOS 14+ menu bar utility that keeps every AI coding-provider limit visible in one place, with a countdown to when each session, weekly, or monthly window resets. It reuses sessions you already have - OAuth tokens, device-flow logins, browser cookies, or local CLI credentials - rather than asking for a new sign-in per provider. A bundled `codexbar` CLI exposes the same data for scripts and CI.
Core Features for AI Resource Management
- ✓Per-provider reset countdowns for session, weekly, and monthly usage windows, so you know before starting a long task whether you'll run out mid-way.
- ✓Merge Icons mode collapses every enabled provider into one menu bar icon with a provider switcher, instead of a row of separate status items.
- ✓Spend and usage charts, presented inline, are available for API-backed providers, including OpenAI, Claude's Admin API, OpenRouter, LiteLLM, z.ai, MiniMax, Mistral, and AWS Bedrock.
- ✓A Settings -> Usage & Spend view that estimates local 7- and 30-day cost, grouped by each provider's native currency, for providers that expose cost history.
- ✓Provider status polling that adds an incident badge in the menu and an overlay on the bar icon when a provider is having problems.
- ✓WidgetKit widgets plus a bundled `codexbar` CLI for scripting cost checks, e.g. `codexbar cost --provider codex`, from CI or a terminal.
- ✓Refresh interval control - Adaptive by default, or fixed at 1, 2, 5, 15, or 30 minutes.
- ✓Localized app and website sharing a 21-language catalog with RTL support.
Getting Started: Installing CodexBar
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later is required. The straightforward path is Homebrew: `brew install --cask codexbar`, or download a build directly from GitHub Releases. The bundled CLI ships separately - on macOS install it after the app with `./bin/install-codexbar-cli.sh`, or on Linux pull the Homebrew formula (`brew install steipete/tap/codexbar`), the Arch Linux AUR package (`yay -S codexbar-cli`), or a release tarball (glibc or static musl builds for aarch64/x86_64). First run: open Settings -> Providers, enable the providers you use, and sign into each one via whatever source it supports - CLI, browser session, OAuth/device flow, API key, or local app files.
Configuring AI Providers and Monitoring Usage
Provider config lives in a JSON file - new installs use `~/.config/codexbar/config.json`, older installs keep reading the legacy `~/.codexbar/config.json`. You can script the same toggles Settings -> Providers exposes: `codexbar config providers` lists them, `codexbar config enable --provider grok` turns one on, `codexbar config disable --provider cursor` turns one off. For API-key providers you can skip the Settings UI entirely and pipe a key in, e.g. `printf '%s' "$ELEVENLABS_API_KEY" | codexbar config set-api-key --provider elevenlabs --stdin` - it trims the piped value, writes it with restrictive file permissions, and enables the provider unless you pass `--no-enable`.
Strengths
- ✓No separate password storage: CodexBar signs in by reusing OAuth tokens, device flow, existing API keys, browser cookies, or local CLI/config files you already have.
- ✓Covers a genuinely long list of providers in one place - Codex, Claude, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, GroqCloud, OpenRouter, LiteLLM, AWS Bedrock, and dozens more - each with its own reset-window logic instead of a generic timer.
- ✓The bundled `codexbar` CLI puts the same usage data behind a scriptable interface, not locked inside the menu bar UI - useful for CI checks or terminal workflows.
- ✓States its own permission asks plainly in the README (Full Disk Access, Keychain) instead of silently requesting them, and lists what it does not request in the background (no Screen Recording, no Accessibility).
Privacy, Permissions, and Platform Notes
- △It's macOS-first: the maintained app only runs on macOS 14+. Linux and Windows users depend on separate, community-built projects - a Linux CLI plus third-party panel widgets, and an unofficial Win-CodexBar port - rather than a first-party GUI.
- △Some providers only work through browser cookie capture rather than a clean API, which means CodexBar needs Keychain access to decrypt that browser's stored cookies - and macOS keeps re-prompting for it unless you manually grant "Always Allow" per browser.
- △The optional agent-aware Adaptive refresh mode inspects the running-process list, including command lines, to detect Codex/Claude activity - a design a privacy-conscious user needs to opt into deliberately rather than assume away.
- △With 19,691 GitHub stars, the README's License line credits a single author (Peter Steinberger); there's no stated multi-maintainer team backing the long list of provider integrations.
CodexBar Integrations and Similar Tools
Common Questions About CodexBar
CodexBar requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later; the README lists no support for earlier macOS versions.
CodexBar doesn't store passwords. It relies on reused sessions - OAuth, browser cookies, device flow - and any API keys you enter get written to the local config file with restrictive file permissions.
CodexBar covers a long list of providers including Codex, OpenAI, Claude, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, GroqCloud, OpenRouter, LiteLLM, AWS Bedrock, and many more, each with its own docs page in the repo.
CodexBar doesn't have an official Linux or Windows GUI. Linux gets a bundled CLI (via Homebrew's Linux formula, an AUR package, or release tarballs) plus community projects like codexbar-waybar and a KDE widget; Windows only has a separate, community-maintained Win-CodexBar port.
CodexBar tracks per-provider session, weekly, and monthly usage windows with reset countdowns, credit balances, spend/cost dashboards where a provider exposes them, and provider status/incident polling.
Full Disk Access is only needed to read Safari's cookies/local storage for browser-cookie-based providers, and Keychain prompts appear when CodexBar decrypts a Chromium browser's "Safe Storage" key or bootstraps Claude OAuth from the CLI's cached credential - both are skippable by disabling Keychain access in Settings.
The problem it solves
AI coding subscriptions each have their own dashboard, their own reset clock, and their own definition of a "window" - session-based for one provider, weekly for another, monthly for a third - so you either bookmark half a dozen tabs or find out you're rate-limited only when a long task fails partway through. CodexBar's specific fix is reading each provider's own usage source (OAuth API, browser cookies, local CLI, config files) directly, so those windows and their reset countdowns sit in one menu bar instead of scattered browser tabs.
Best use cases
- •Running Codex and Claude side by side and wanting to see both providers' session/weekly windows before starting a long task, instead of switching between two web dashboards.
- •Tracking spend across multiple API-backed providers (OpenAI, Claude Admin API, OpenRouter, LiteLLM, AWS Bedrock, and others) from the Settings -> Usage & Spend view's 7/30-day local estimates.
- •Scripting usage checks into CI or shell tooling with the bundled `codexbar` CLI, e.g. `codexbar cost --provider both` for Codex and Claude in one call.
- •Getting a heads-up when a provider is having an incident via the status-polling badge, instead of debugging a stalled agent run that's actually a provider outage.
- •Running the Linux CLI under a community panel widget (Waybar, GNOME, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon) instead of the macOS app.
Who should try it — and who should skip
If you run two or more AI coding tools day to day - say Codex plus Claude, or a handful of API-backed providers - and you're tired of getting cut off mid-task without warning, CodexBar earns its spot in the menu bar. Skip it if you use exactly one provider with a usage page you already check, or if you're not on macOS 14+: the Linux CLI and third-party community widgets exist but aren't the polished experience the README documents for macOS.