Serverlife

See every local dev server, start and stop them, and keep them alive while you present.

A small resident app for the Windows notification area and the macOS menu bar. It lists what is listening on localhost — with the port, the folder, and the actual <title> of the page being served, so a row reads "Astarte 3D — workbench" rather than "node.exe". Drop a folder on it to serve that folder. And when a server falls over mid-presentation, it brings it back.

A sibling to Photokompressor, built the same way: twin native apps sharing one design system — C#/WPF on Windows, Swift/SwiftUI on macOS.

Status

Both apps work end to end.

Discovery (ports, PIDs, folders, page titles)	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
Origin split (Mine / System) with manual pins	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
Contested-port detection	✅ Windows	✅ macOS, rare in practice
Tray / menu bar panel, resident, close-to-tray	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
About & settings panel, always-on-top	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
Start / stop (whole process tree)	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
Drop a folder to serve it	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
Built-in static server, no tooling needed	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
Auto-restart watchdog with backoff	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
Adopt an externally started server	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
Adopt a listener running from a managed server's own folder	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
Full PATH for spawned servers (nvm / Volta / scoop / Homebrew installs)	✅ Windows (Environment registry keys)	✅ macOS (login shell)
Inline rename of a managed row — double-click the name	✅ Windows	✅ macOS
Right-click "Start server here"	✅ Windows (Explorer verb)	✅ macOS (Finder Quick Action)
Single-instance folder handoff	✅ Windows (mutex/pipe)	✅ macOS (free — LSMultipleInstancesProhibited)
Packaging (sha256 beside every artifact)	✅ Windows — portable zip and an installer (build/package.ps1)	✅ macOS — drag-to-Applications .dmg (build/package-mac.sh)
Automated tests	not yet — tests/ is a placeholder	✅ macOS (macos/Tests/ServerlifeCoreTests)
Launch-at-login	not yet	not yet
CI / notarization	not yet	not yet

Run it

Windows

dotnet build src/Serverlife/Serverlife.csproj
src/Serverlife/bin/Debug/net8.0-windows/Serverlife.exe

It lands in the notification area. Left-click toggles the panel; closing the window hides it; Quit is on the tray menu. Pass a folder path to stage it for serving, which is what the Explorer folder verb will do.

macOS

cd macos && swift build
.build/debug/Serverlife

It lands in the menu bar (and the Dock). Left-click the menu bar icon toggles the panel; closing it hides to the menu bar; Quit is on its right-click menu. Drag a folder onto it, or right-click a folder in Finder and choose "Start server here" once that's switched on from the (i) button's settings panel.

Headless modes

Windows:

Serverlife.exe --scan [--all]
Serverlife.exe --run <folder> [command] [--seconds N] [--no-restart]

macOS (a separate serverlife-cli binary, built from macos/Sources/ServerlifeCLI):

serverlife-cli --scan [--all]
serverlife-cli --run <folder> [command] [--seconds N] [--no-restart]

PORT   PID     PROCESS      NAME / TITLE                  FOLDER
5178   20548   node.exe     Astarte 3D — workbench        C:\...\Astarte 3D
8765!  7428    python.exe   Christopher Brellis — ...     C:\...\antidot 2026\site
...
! = port 8765 has 5 unrelated processes bound to it; only the last one to bind is serving.

--all also lists ports that did not answer as HTTP.

That ! is worth explaining, because it is the reason this app is useful. Windows lets several processes bind the same TCP port unless a socket asks for SO_EXCLUSIVEADDRUSE, so orphaned dev servers quietly pile up and only the last one to bind gets the connections. That is what "I edited the file and nothing changed" usually is.

How it finds things

Windows and macOS expose these facts in different places entirely, so each platform's Discovery uses its own mechanisms:

Fact	Windows	macOS
Listening ports → owning PID	GetExtendedTcpTable (iphlpapi)	proc_listpids → proc_pidinfo/proc_pidfdinfo (libproc)
Process name, command line, parent	Win32_Process via WMI, one batched query	proc_name, sysctl(KERN_PROCARGS2), proc_pidinfo — one syscall each, no batching needed
Working directory	read out of the target process's PEB — WMI does not expose it	proc_pidinfo(PROC_PIDVNODEPATHINFO) — a documented API
Page title	one capped GET to the port, cached per (port, PID)	same

On Windows the PEB read is the fragile step: undocumented offsets, 64-bit targets only, allowed to fail quietly. macOS has no such step — PROC_PIDVNODEPATHINFO is a supported API — so the only way a folder comes back unknown there is a same-uid restriction (a process owned by another user). Both platforms degrade to "unknown folder" rather than breaking the list.

Contested ports — several unrelated processes bound to the same port, which is what "I edited the file and nothing changed" usually turns out to be — are a genuinely Windows pathology: Windows allows a second bind unless a socket asks for SO_EXCLUSIVEADDRUSE, while BSD (macOS) refuses a second bind outright unless a socket asks for the opposite, SO_REUSEPORT. The detection ships on both platforms, but it is rare in practice on macOS.

Layout

src/Serverlife/     Windows app — C# / WPF, net8.0-windows
macos/              macOS app — Swift / SwiftUI, SwiftPM
                      Sources/ServerlifeCore   discovery, supervisor, static server, Finder integration
                      Sources/ServerlifeCLI    headless --scan / --run, a separate binary
                      Sources/Serverlife       the menu bar app
                      Tests/ServerlifeCoreTests
tests/              placeholder — nothing here yet
build/              packaging scripts, one per platform (package.ps1, package-mac.sh)
                      installer/               Inno Setup script + generated wizard art

Building a release

Windows:

build\package.ps1                  # both downloads
build\package.ps1 -SkipInstaller   # zip only, no Inno Setup needed

Publishes framework-dependent (needs the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime, not bundled) and produces two things in dist/, not committed, each with a .sha256 beside it:

• Serverlife-<version>-win-x64.zip — the published folder plus LICENSE, THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md and a READ-ME-FIRST.txt. Extract-and-run, for people who want no installer.
• Serverlife-Setup-<version>.exe — an Inno Setup installer (build/installer/serverlife.iss, modern wizard, art from make-wizard-art.py). Installs per-user to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Serverlife with no admin, Start-menu shortcut and an entry in Add/Remove Programs. It carries only the ~1 MB app: on a machine without the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime it downloads that from Microsoft during setup, and on one that already has it nothing extra is fetched. A checkbox (off by default) registers the "Start server here" Explorer verb by calling the app's own --register-shell; uninstall calls --unregister-shell.

The installer step needs Inno Setup 6 — winget install JRSoftware.InnoSetup. Without it, package.ps1 warns and builds just the zip.

macOS:

bash build/package-mac.sh

Builds both the app and serverlife-cli, assembles a self-contained Serverlife.app with its own .icns and bundled fonts, and wraps it in a drag-to-Applications disk image — into dist-mac/, not committed:

• Serverlife-<version>-mac-arm64.dmg — the website download (Apple Silicon only), with a .sha256 beside it. Carries Serverlife.app, an /Applications shortcut, LICENSE and a READ-ME-FIRST.txt.

Ad-hoc signed by default — the first launch then needs a one-time System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway (covered in READ-ME-FIRST.txt). Set SERVERLIFE_SIGN_ID and SERVERLIFE_NOTARY_PROFILE before running to Developer ID sign and Apple-notarise the .dmg instead, which removes that step for downloaders.

Licence

MIT. Bundles Fira Sans Condensed under the SIL Open Font License — see licenses/ and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.