💬 PromptBar 2.0
Any chat. Any model. One keystroke away.
The macOS menubar chat container that's yours to shape.
Kontejneri i bisedave ne menubar te macOS qe e formon ti vete.
🌐 promptbar.peterdsp.dev · Features · Why 2.0 is different · Install · BYO Key · Privacy · Support
You bring the URL. You bring the key. You bring the prompts.
PromptBar gives them a home in your menubar, fast, glassy, private.
🇬🇧 English
What is PromptBar
PromptBar is a lightweight macOS menubar app that lives one keystroke away. It does two things, and it does them well:
- Wraps any web-based chat you point it at in a clean, distraction-free popover.
- Talks natively to any OpenAI-compatible API endpoint you configure, your key, your model, your endpoint, your data.
It ships empty. No bundled providers. No bundled logos. No bundled brand names. You decide what goes in the menubar, and the app stays out of your way.
Why 2.0 is different
| Before | After |
|---|
| Hard-coded list of providers | Empty by default, you add what you want |
| Web-only, hidden iframe | Native streaming chat with BYO API key |
| Firebase analytics + remote config | Zero tracking, zero remote config |
| macOS 12 baseline | macOS 26 Liquid Glass, top to bottom |
| Brand names in the UI | No third-party brand names, anywhere |
| Paperclip uploads broken | Fixed, popover stays put for the file picker |
✨ Features
- 🪟 Liquid Glass UI, built top-to-bottom on macOS 26's Liquid Glass material system.
- 🌐 Wrap any web chat, paste a URL, pick a name, an icon, a color. Done.
- 🔑 Bring your own API key, connect any OpenAI-compatible chat-completions endpoint and stream natively.
- 📚 Prompt Library, save your best prompts once; reuse them in any chat. Search, tag, ship.
- 💬 Native streaming chat, server-sent events, multi-conversation history, cancel mid-stream.
- 🎨 Make every chat yours, SF Symbol icons + color tints per service.
- 🔐 Keychain-backed keys, API keys live in the macOS Keychain. Not in UserDefaults. Not in iCloud. Not in a log file.
- 🪶 Menubar-only, no Dock noise.
⌥⌘O to summon it.
- 🪟 Always-on-top mode, pin the popover over any app.
- 📐 Three sizes, Small / Medium / Large, persisted.
- 🧹 One-click cookie sweep, clear all WebKit local data when you want a clean slate.
- 🚫 No analytics, no telemetry, no remote config. Updates check GitHub Releases directly.
🔑 Bring your own key
PromptBar speaks the OpenAI-compatible POST /chat/completions schema, the de-facto standard supported by the vast majority of inference services and local runtimes. If your endpoint understands it, PromptBar can chat with it.
You configure:
- Display name, whatever you want it called
- Base URL, e.g.
https://api.example.com/v1
- Model, e.g.
gpt-4o-mini, llama-3.1-70b, anything your endpoint serves
- API key, stored in the macOS Keychain
- System prompt, optional, persisted per endpoint
- Streaming, on by default, can be disabled
Your messages go straight from your Mac to your endpoint URL. No relay, no middleman, no proxy.
💻 Requirements
- macOS 26.0+ (Liquid Glass APIs)
📥 Install
PromptBar ships through two channels:
Both packages are byte-identical except for an EXTERNAL_DISTRIBUTION flag that turns on the license-key prompt on first launch for Ko-fi buyers. Source builds and GitHub Release downloads run with no key prompt.
# After install
open -a PromptBar
# Press ⌥⌘O from anywhere to toggle the window.
🛠️ Building from source
git clone https://github.com/peterdsp/PromptBar.git
cd PromptBar
open PromptBar/PromptBar.xcodeproj
# Xcode 26+, build & run
📦 Cutting a signed release
Maintainers, see scripts/build-release-pkg.sh for the full archive → sign → package pipeline. The script verifies your Keychain has the right Developer ID identities, archives the Release configuration, runs pkgbuild and productbuild with Developer ID Installer, then prints the notarytool and stapler commands to finish.
🔒 Privacy
- No accounts. PromptBar creates none.
- No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reports. None.
- No remote config. Firebase is gone for good.
- API keys live in the Keychain. Not in UserDefaults, not in iCloud.
- Updates check
api.github.com directly. Same anonymous HTTP any browser would send.
- Web chats run inside
WKWebView. Cookies live on this Mac only. Clear them at any time.
Full details in PRIVACY_POLICY.md and USER_PRIVACY_CHOICES.md.
🧠 Power moves
- ⌥⌘O, toggle the popover from anywhere on your system.
- ⌘P (inside chat), open the Prompt Library quick picker.
- ⌘↩, send a message in the native chat.
- Right-click the menubar icon, Settings, Always-on-Top, Window Size, Clean Cookies & Cache, Quit.
🛠️ Build from source
git clone https://github.com/peterdsp/PromptBar.git
cd PromptBar
open PromptBar/PromptBar.xcodeproj
# Xcode 26+, build & run
Read AGENTS.md before contributing, it's the rulebook (especially the App Store compliance section).
❤️ Support
PromptBar is single-developer software. Every coffee and every star keeps it shipping.
📜 License
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
If PromptBar saved you a tab, drop a ⭐
Nese PromptBar te kurseu nje tab, lere nje ⭐
Built with 💎 in Tirana and Athens by @peterdsp.
Ndertuar me 💎 ne Tirane dhe Athine nga @peterdsp.
