BlackBar — your Blacksmith status, in your menu bar

WATCH THE FORGE.

BlackBar mirrors what Blacksmith already shows you — in the place you already look.

01

Live status from `status.blacksmith.sh`

Public summary feed, polled every 60 seconds. Green when the forge is hot, orange when a region's wobbling.

02

vCPU counter for your active runs

Reads runner labels like blacksmith-4vcpu-ubuntu-2404 and totals the active vCPU — so you can spot a queue meltdown before your bill does.

03

Tiny graph right in the menu bar

An 18-bar history of recent activity, crammed into 54 pixels. Glance, don't context-switch.

HOW IT WORKS

No proxies. No scrapers. Two endpoints and a Keychain entry.

01 · Public status

Fetches status.blacksmith.sh/summary.json. No auth, no spying — same JSON your team's status page already shows.

02 · Your dashboard

Sign in once with Blacksmith's GitHub OAuth in a native WebKit window. Session cookie lands in your Keychain.

03 · Local only

BlackBar talks to Blacksmith. Nothing else. 0 third-party SDKs. 0 telemetry. 0 background sync to anyone but you.

INSTALL.

Two ways. Pick one.

01 · Homebrew

$ brew install --cask steipete/tap/blackbar

02 · Direct download

Download BlackBar v0.1.2.zip

Unzip and drag BlackBar.app into /Applications. Signed, notarized, auto-updates via Sparkle.

03 · Build from source

$ git clone https://github.com/steipete/BlackBar.git
$ cd BlackBar && make app
$ open build/BlackBar.app

Requires macOS 14+ and a Swift 6 toolchain. Full instructions →

QUESTIONS.

Is this Blacksmith?

No. BlackBar is an unofficial, independent menu bar app made by a Blacksmith customer who got tired of clicking. Not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Blacksmith. "Blacksmith" and the Blacksmith logo are trademarks of their respective owners.

Does it ship my data anywhere?

No. BlackBar only talks to status.blacksmith.sh and app.blacksmith.sh. No analytics, no crash reporters, no servers in between.

How does login work?

The same GitHub OAuth flow you'd use on the Blacksmith dashboard, in a native WebKit window. The resulting session cookie is stored in your macOS Keychain. Sign out wipes it.

What if Blacksmith changes their API?

Open an issue on GitHub. BlackBar is small enough that fixes ship the same week. The status feed is public and the dashboard endpoints are stable enough to be useful.

Will this work without a Blacksmith account?

Partially. The public status feed works for everyone. The vCPU counter and active-jobs list need a logged-in Blacksmith session.

Why "BlackBar"?

Because it's a black bar in your menu bar that watches Blacksmith. The naming committee was a coffee.