Groundbar

English · Italiano

A Windows-style taskbar for macOS: a bottom bar with a Start menu of recent apps, a list of each app's open documents, recent files, a Bitcoin widget and themes. Native Swift/SwiftUI + AppKit, public APIs only, no third-party dependencies.

Available in English and Italian: Groundbar follows the language set in macOS.

Groundbar was called OmniBar up to version 0.2.0.

Features

• Start menu: recently used apps, Recommended recent files, All apps, and search across apps and files (Return opens, ↑↓ to select), plus a power menu.
• Pinned and running apps in one bar, with an active-app indicator. Apps that aren't pinned only show up while they have open windows.
• Per-app document list: hover or click an icon to see every open document of that app, minimised ones included. Click one to bring it to the front, or close it with ✕.
• Recent documents (jump lists) in each app's right-click menu, e.g. Word, Excel or a PDF reader.
• Pin folders and files by dragging them onto the bar.
• Screenshots of a region or of the whole screen, saved to disk and copied to the clipboard.
• Bitcoin widget: price in euro, 24-hour change and sparkline. Click it for a chart from 24 hours to 1 year (data from CoinGecko).
• Quick settings: network, volume, battery, theme.
• Show desktop strip on the right edge.
• Themes: System, Light, Dark, Liquid Glass (the system glass material on macOS 26 and later), Halloween 🎃, Christmas 🎄 (falling snow, twinkling lights) and Santa 🎅 (a night sky with Santa's sleigh flying across the bar).
• Global shortcuts: ⌃⌥1…9 opens the n-th app, ⌃⌥Space opens Start, ⌃⌥D shows the desktop.
• Launch at login, from the bar's right-click menu.
• Multiple displays: a bar on every display, each listing the apps whose windows are on it (pinned apps on all). Bars appear and disappear as you connect displays; Start and previews open on the display you click.
• Settings window: theme, icon layout, displays, Bitcoin widget and currency (EUR/USD), screenshot buttons, shortcuts, updates.
• Update notices: Groundbar checks GitHub once a day and tells you when a new version is out (it never installs anything by itself).

Document list	Bitcoin	Quick settings

Requirements

macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.

Installation

From a release

1. Download Groundbar.zip from Releases, unzip it and move Groundbar.app to Applications.
2. The app isn't notarised by Apple, so macOS blocks it on first launch. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

From source

Apple's Command Line Tools are enough (xcode-select --install); Xcode is not required.

./scripts/bundle.sh            # builds build/Groundbar.app
./scripts/bundle.sh universal  # Apple silicon + Intel
open build/Groundbar.app

Permissions

On first launch, a welcome window explains each permission, opens the right settings pane and shows when it is granted. Reopen it any time from the bar's right-click menu › Setup & Permissions…. The permissions live in System Settings › Privacy & Security.

Permission	What it's for
Accessibility	Listing open windows and documents, bringing them to the front, restoring and closing them
Screen Recording	Window titles and screenshots
Automation › System Events	Sleep, Restart, Shut Down and Log Out from the Start menu (asked on first use)

With ad-hoc signing, macOS may ask for the permissions again after every rebuild. To avoid that, sign with a stable identity: set GROUNDBAR_SIGN_IDENTITY, or create scripts/signing.local containing GROUNDBAR_SIGN_IDENTITY="Your identity".

Privacy & security

• No telemetry, no accounts. Groundbar makes two kinds of network request, both over HTTPS and carrying no information about you: the public CoinGecko API for the Bitcoin price (off if you hide the widget), and GitHub's public API once a day to check for a new release (off in Settings › Updates).
• Permissions are used locally only. Accessibility lists, raises and closes windows and reads which document each window shows; Screen Recording provides window titles and screenshots. Nothing leaves your Mac.
• What Groundbar stores on your Mac:
  • settings and the lists of recent apps and recent documents (file paths), in ~/Library/Preferences/app.groundbar.Groundbar.plist;
  • screenshots, in the folder macOS uses for screenshots;
  • a small diagnostic log, ~/Library/Logs/Groundbar.log: start-up and errors only, never window titles or file names, capped at 1 MB.
• Commands it runs: screencapture for screenshots, pmset displaysleepnow to lock the screen, System Events for Sleep, Restart, Shut Down and Log Out, and defaults write com.apple.dock autohide + killall Dock only when you choose Automatically Hide the Dock.
• No third-party dependencies, and the source code is open.
• Verify your download. The app is not notarised by Apple, so each release lists the SHA-256 checksum of Groundbar.zip. Compare it with shasum -a 256 Groundbar.zip.
• Remove everything: quit Groundbar, delete the app, then run defaults delete app.groundbar.Groundbar and delete ~/Library/Logs/Groundbar*.log.

Known limitations

• macOS doesn't let an app reserve space at the edge of the screen, so maximised windows can extend under the bar. Hiding the Dock automatically helps (right-click the bar › Automatically Hide the Dock).
• Tabs inside one window (e.g. several PDFs in tabs) appear as a single document.
• Only windows on the current Space are listed.
• Other apps' menu bar icons don't appear in the tray.
• To read the windows of some apps (e.g. Microsoft Office), Groundbar turns on their accessibility interface; in rare cases this can slow down window animations in those apps.

Development

• .build/debug/Groundbar --snapshot <folder> saves PNGs of the bar and its panels, then quits. GROUNDBAR_DEMO=1 swaps in sample apps and files, GROUNDBAR_SNAPSHOT_STEPS=bar,start limits the steps.
• scripts/demo-gif.swift builds the README demo GIF from those renders.
• scripts/social-preview.swift renders the repository's social preview image; scripts/app-icon.swift renders the app icon (then build Resources/AppIcon.icns with sips and iconutil).
• Only public macOS APIs are used: NSWorkspace, Accessibility, ScreenCaptureKit, Spotlight (NSMetadataQuery), CoreAudio, IOKit, Carbon (global hotkeys) and ServiceManagement.

License

MIT © 2026 csvnm