Glass Deck
Eleven system switches, a ⌘K command palette, a clipboard shelf, live graphs with a process list and cache cleanup — in one glass panel in your menu bar.
Download · Website · Changelog
New in 1.7.0
Press ⌘K and the whole deck collapses into one search field. Every switch, every tool action and every tab is one query away: type dark to flip the theme, trash to empty the bin, 截图 to grab the screen, then ↑↓ to pick and ↩ to run — no mouse, no tab-hopping. English words find Chinese controls because every switch carries its own aliases alongside its translated title, and the right-hand note counts as search text, so 动作 lists every action.
Opening it never blocks: switch state comes from the cache the background refresh already filled instead of shelling out to defaults and osascript on the main thread. The action list is the Tools tab flattened — same calls, same titles — and ⌘1…⌘7 jump straight to a tab. Nine new strings, translated into all five languages.
New in 1.6.2
Monitor now shows the last minute instead of a single number. CPU, memory and network each get a 60-sample history curve, drawn at 1 Hz with the network curve auto-scaled against a decaying peak so one big download does not flatten the rest of the graph. Numbers without a culprit are trivia, so the tab also lists the top four processes by CPU with their resident memory — the × button sends a normal terminate to GUI apps (they get to save) and SIGTERM to everything else, then re-reads the list. Sampling uses ps on a utility queue, every three seconds, and only while the tab is open.
The whole tab scrolls now, so a long process list can never squeeze the cards or clip the last row.
New in 1.6.1
A clipboard shelf in the panel. Copy anything anywhere and the last 60 text clips are already there when you open Glass Deck: click a row to put it back on the pasteboard, pin the ones you paste daily so they never age out, delete the rest. History is written to ~/Library/Application Support/GlassDeck/clipboard.json on this Mac only — nothing leaves the machine. Anything a password manager marks as confidential is skipped and never recorded, and the record switch at the top of the tab turns the whole thing off.
The tab bar is now icon-only with tooltips, because seven labelled segments no longer fit in a 380 pt panel and truncating "Clipb…" helps nobody.
New in 1.6.0
The app added the offline workspace. Switch between System controls and Workspace in the main window, or open Workspace from the menu bar's right-click menu. Focus timers, tasks, notes and tools are bundled inside the app and do not need a web server. JSON/TXT exports use macOS Save dialogs and backups can be imported through a file picker. Native and browser data are separate; transfer them using backup export/import. The workspace interface is currently in Simplified Chinese; native system controls retain their existing five languages.
Cross platform web app
Glass Deck now includes a buildless PWA in website/app/ with focus timers, tasks, autosaved notes, backup import/export, unit conversion, text statistics and JSON formatting. It runs in modern browsers on Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and iPadOS; installation varies by browser. The macOS system controls remain in the native app. Data stays in the current browser and does not sync automatically.
Run npm test and python3 -m http.server 4173 --directory website, then open http://localhost:4173/app/. See web app documentation for offline behavior, installation, limitations and deployment.
Install
brew tap Aaron-CNSD/tap
brew trust Aaron-CNSD/tap # Homebrew 5+ asks before running third-party casks
brew install --cask glassdeck
Or grab the DMG directly: Glass.Deck.v1.7.0.dmg → drag to Applications → click the glass prism in the menu bar.
Glass Deck is open source and not notarized (that needs a $99/year Apple Developer account). macOS quarantines unsigned downloads, so you have to clear the flag once:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/GlassDeck.app"
Then open it normally. Homebrew users are unaffected — Homebrew clears the flag for you.
No telemetry. No account. No network calls except the ones you ask for. 2.8 MB universal binary (Apple Silicon and Intel) — this is AppKit, not Electron.
Why another switch app?
There are good ones already (OnlySwitch is the classic). Glass Deck exists because of four specific annoyances:
| Annoyance | What Glass Deck does |
|---|
| Flipping four switches one at a time before a meeting | Scenes — Present / Focus / Tidy / All Off, one click |
| Scrolling a dozen capsules hunting for one toggle | Search — type three letters, the list filters |
| Digging through the panel to reach the same switches daily | Desktop widgets (small / medium / large) + a menu bar scene menu |
| “Cache cleaner” apps that show a scary number then ask for money | Cleaner that lists exactly what it will delete, and deletes only that |
And one technical point: on macOS 26+ the panel uses NSGlassEffectView — the OS renders the real refractive glass, including the self-lit rim. It is not a hand-rolled blur. On macOS 14–15 it falls back to NSVisualEffectView.
What's inside
Switches (11)
🌙 Dark Mode · 👁️ Hidden Files · 📁 Finder Path Bar · 🖥️ Hide Desktop Icons · 😴 Keep Awake · 🔇 Mute · 🚢 Auto-Hide Dock · 📊 Hide Menu Bar · 🖱️ Natural Scrolling · 📊 Status Bar · 🔤 File Extensions
Monitor
Live CPU / memory / network throughput, read through the public host_statistics API — no kernel extensions, no private frameworks.
Windows
Every running app in a list, with bring to front and force quit — the button macOS doesn't give you.
Cleaner
Scans Xcode DerivedData, Homebrew / CocoaPods / SwiftPM caches, tells you what each one weighs before you commit.
Clipboard
Your last 60 text clips, pinned or not, searchable by eye and one click from the pasteboard. Password-manager items are skipped.
Tools
Screenshot, screen recording, and clipboard OCR (Vision framework — copy an image, get text back).
Launch
Pin the URLs, files and commands you open ten times a day.
Scenes
| Scene | What it flips |
|---|
| 🎬 Present | Hide desktop icons · auto-hide Dock · hide menu bar |
| 🌙 Focus | Mute · hide desktop icons |
| ✨ Tidy | Hidden files off · path bar off · status bar off · extensions off |
| ⏻ All Off | Every switch in the deck |
Screenshot
Languages
English · 简体中文 · 繁體中文 · 日本語 · 한국어 — auto-detected from the system, overridable from the menu.
Build from source
git clone https://github.com/Aaron-CNSD/GlassDeck.git
cd GlassDeck
./build-app.sh # app only, no Xcode required
open build/GlassDeck.app
For the widget extension you need full Xcode:
xcodegen generate && open GlassDeck.xcodeproj # ⌘R
Sources/GlassDeck/ Main app (pure AppKit)
GlassPanel.swift Liquid Glass surface (NSGlassEffectView)
DeckViewController.swift The panel layout
Scenes.swift Multi-switch presets
ClipboardStore.swift Clipboard history + persistence
SystemController.swift System state read/write
Localization.swift 5-language string tables
Sources/Shared/ Model shared with the widget
Widget/ WidgetKit extension (3 sizes)
website/ Landing page (Cloudflare Worker)
How the glass works
if #available(macOS 26.0, *) {
let glass = NSGlassEffectView()
glass.cornerRadius = 24
glass.contentView = myContent // content goes HERE…
} else {
let effect = NSVisualEffectView() // …frosted fallback
effect.material = .hudWindow
}
The one rule from Apple's guidance: put content into contentView, never addSubview onto the glass — only contentView is guaranteed to sit inside the glass layer.
Contributing
Adding a switch is a dozen lines — append a Toggle and its translations:
Toggle(id: "mynewtoggle", title: L.t(.myNewToggle), symbol: "sparkles",
isOn: { /* read state */ },
setState: { /* apply state */ })
Ideas that would help most: more scenes, per-scene hotkeys, a Shortcuts/App Intents bridge, Spanish and German translations. Open an issue before a big PR so we don't collide.
License
MIT © 2026 Aaron
If Glass Deck earns a place in your menu bar, a ⭐ helps other people find it — it is the only signal that ranks a small project above the noise.
