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Requirements

Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 14 or later.

Install

1. Download MonoBar (~1.9 MB).
2. Unzip it — most Macs do this automatically.
3. Drag MonoBar.app to your Applications folder.
4. Double-click to open. macOS may ask once whether you're sure you want to open an app downloaded from the internet — that's the normal prompt for any downloaded app. Click Open.

MonoBar is signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, so it opens without security warnings or workarounds.

Verifying the download (optional)

If you'd like to confirm the file is exactly what was published, run:

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/MonoBar-1.0.0-macos.zip

It should print:

88eca99585238a392320e296d7d61e1933233f5258b6f13a5d1ba7981a7bbc90

You can also check the signature:

codesign --verify --deep --strict /Applications/MonoBar.app
spctl --assess --type execute /Applications/MonoBar.app

The second command should report source=Notarized Developer ID.

First launch

MonoBar appears in your menu bar as a small [|] symbol. It starts paused — MonoBar never checks anything until you tell it to.

1. Click the symbol, then the gear to open Settings.
2. Add your website — a public https:// address. MonoBar checks the URL without saving anything to history, so you can test first.
3. Pick a check interval (10 minutes is a sensible default).
4. Close Settings and press Start.

That's setup. The popover now shows current status, response time, sampled uptime, recent history, and recent checks.

Start, stop, check now

Monitoring runs only while MonoBar is open and started. Stop ends all checking immediately; Check now runs one check on demand; Quit ends everything — as the app itself puts it, all activity ends when this app quits.

Understanding status and history

• UP / DOWN reflects the most recent check's result, with the HTTP status and response time listed per check.
• Sampled uptime is the share of successful checks in your recent history — samples taken while MonoBar was running, not a 24/7 guarantee.
• Unknown is used when an optional provider feed can't be reached or understood. Website status reflects the request result from this Mac; MonoBar 1.0 doesn't yet distinguish a local network outage from a site failure.

Provider Status (optional)

MonoBar can summarize the official status feeds from Anthropic and OpenAI — useful if your work leans on them daily. It's off by default: enable providers in Settings and they appear as a second tab in the popover. These are the providers' own official reports, not independent verification.

What MonoBar doesn't do

• It doesn't watch your site 24/7 — checks run from your Mac while the app is running. For always-on external monitoring with alerts, use a hosted service; MonoBar is a calm local companion and pairs happily with one.
• It doesn't monitor private/internal hosts, HTTP sites, or anything needing credentials.

Troubleshooting

• Checks fail but the site is up in a browser: if you run a firewall like Little Snitch or LuLu, allow MonoBar to make outgoing connections.
• "Website Needs Attention" in the popover: your configured URL is no longer valid (for example, not HTTPS). Open Settings and correct it — MonoBar won't record false failures while the configuration is invalid.
• Numbers look different from these screenshots: MonoBar follows your system's region format. 2.4s and 2,4 s are the same thing.

Updating

MonoBar doesn't check for updates on its own — it doesn't phone home for anything. New versions are announced in the Changelog, where each release lists its own SHA-256.

To update: download the new version, quit MonoBar, and replace the app in your Applications folder. Your settings and history stay where they are — they live in ~/Library/Application Support/MonoBar/, not inside the app.

Uninstall

Quit MonoBar, delete the app, and remove ~/Library/Application Support/MonoBar/ if you also want the local history gone. That's the whole footprint.