Show HN: macOS menu bar gauges for your Claude Code quota

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Summary

A macOS menu bar utility that displays real-time Claude Code API quota usage via SwiftBar, supporting multiple accounts and showing utilization bars with countdowns when limits are reached.

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Cached at: 06/10/26, 11:43 AM

grzegorz-raczek-unit8/claude-quota

Source: https://github.com/grzegorz-raczek-unit8/claude-quota

claude-quota

Menu bar gauges for your Claude Code quota — one bar per account, like this:

menu bar screenshot

(drawn for dark menu bars — white outlines)

  • Each bar shows the 5-hour-window utilization for one account, colored green / orange (≥70%) / red (≥90%).
  • When the 5-hour window is fully used, the bar shows a countdown until reset (4:28) instead of the percentage.
  • When the weekly limit is hit, the bar turns black with a countdown to the weekly reset (2D) — that’s the harder cap, whatever the 5-hour window says.
  • The dropdown lists full detail for every account inline: 5-hour and weekly windows, per-model windows where your plan reports them, extra-usage credits, and reset times.
  • Refreshes every 5 minutes (SwiftBar filename convention) plus a manual “Refresh now” entry.

Quick install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grzegorz-raczek-unit8/claude-quota/main/install.sh | bash

Requires macOS and Homebrew. When macOS shows a Keychain permission dialog on the first refresh, click Always Allow.

How it works

The plugin reads your Claude Code OAuth token from the macOS Keychain (read-only — it never refreshes or rewrites tokens, so it can’t log you out) and queries the same usage endpoint that Claude Code’s /usage screen uses. No passwords, no scraping, no third-party services.

Note: that endpoint is internal to Claude Code and undocumented, so a future Claude Code change may require a small fix here.

Install from a checkout

git clone https://github.com/grzegorz-raczek-unit8/claude-quota.git
cd claude-quota
./install.sh

Either install path sets up SwiftBar via Homebrew if you don’t have it. If an account shows ⚠, its token went stale from disuse — run that claude CLI once and the widget recovers on the next cycle.

Accounts

By default the plugin auto-discovers accounts: every ~/.claude / ~/.claude-* config directory that has a Claude Code Keychain entry gets a bar, labeled by the directory suffix (~/.claude-workW). A single auto-discovered account shows no letter label — just the bar.

To pin or rename accounts (e.g. you use multiple CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIRs), create ~/.config/claude-quota/accounts with one path [label] per line (single-word labels):

~/.claude-work Work
~/.claude-priv Priv

To hide an account’s menu bar gauge (its dropdown detail stays), use Hide from menu bar under that account’s row in the dropdown — or edit ~/.config/claude-quota/hidden (one label per line).

Multiple accounts via CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR look like this in your shell rc:

claude()      { CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR="$HOME/.claude-work" command claude "$@"; }
claude-priv() { CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR="$HOME/.claude-priv" command claude "$@"; }

Uninstall

Delete claude-quota.5m.py from your SwiftBar plugin folder (~/.swiftbar by default).

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