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

(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-work → W). 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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