CLIENTS / MACOS MENUBAR

macOS menubar

The macOS menubar client is a native Swift app maintained in promptLM/promptlm-macos. It lives in the menu bar, opens a Spotlight-style picker via a global shortcut, and inserts rendered prompts at the cursor.

Note

The macOS client is in early scaffold for the 0.1.0 release. The menu bar icon is in place; picker, hotkey, repository loading, render and paste are tracked in the repo’s issues.

Requirements

  • macOS 13 (Ventura) or later

  • Xcode 15+ / Swift 5.9+ for development

Install

git clone https://github.com/promptLM/promptlm-macos.git
cd promptlm-macos
./install.sh             # build, wrap into .app, install to ~/Applications
./install.sh --launch    # also start the app
./install.sh --system    # install to /Applications (uses sudo)
./install.sh --uninstall # remove the installed bundle

After install, a chat-bubble icon appears in the menu bar. The default global hotkey is ⌃⌥⌘P.

Settings

Open via the menu bar icon → Settings… (⌘,):

  • Prompt repository — folder the app scans for .yaml, .yml, *.json prompt specs. Defaults to ~/.promptlm/prompts.

  • Global hotkey — click Record, press your combo (must include ⌘, ⌥, or ⌃). ⎋ cancels.

  • Launch at login — uses SMAppService (macOS 13+).

Selecting a prompt

  • Prompts with no placeholders — text is pasted at the cursor.

  • Prompts with placeholders — a form opens with a field per placeholder (defaults pre-filled, required fields marked *); on submit the rendered text is pasted at the cursor.

The original clipboard contents are restored ~400 ms after the paste.