#1066 Show and tell: DS Menu Bar - lightweight macOS control for ds4-server · ds4

I built DS Menu Bar, a small, lightweight native macOS menu bar app for running and configuring a local ds4-server.

Repo: https://github.com/jiiim/ds-menu-bar

The main goal is to keep ds4-server available without becoming another application you have to work inside.

There are now several apps that can run or wrap ds4, but many provide their own chat UI, workspace, model-management experience, or other substantial interface. DS Menu Bar deliberately does much less.

It sits in the menu bar, stays out of the way, and handles the local server while you keep using whatever tools you already prefer — Zed, OpenCode, Pi Coding Agent, or any other client that can talk to the server.

It provides:

start / stop / restart and server status from the menu bar
optional live prefill and generation throughput in the menu bar
model-aware settings for server, performance, KV cache, MTP, and diagnostics
detection and validation of supported DwarfStar model files before launch
access to the generated ds4-server command and rotating server logs
optional request tracing for diagnostics
launch-at-login support

The app does not bundle ds4-server, models, a chat client, or an editor. It uses an existing local build and DwarfStar-compatible GGUFs, and its job is simply to keep the server close at hand without competing with the tools that actually use it.

I mainly built it because I wanted ds4-server to feel like a background system service rather than another destination app: unobtrusive when everything is working, but always one click away when I want to change a model, inspect settings, check throughput, restart the server, or look at logs.

Current requirements are macOS 26+, Apple silicon, and a compatible ds4-server build.

Sharing here in case this kind of lightweight setup is useful to other macOS users of ds4. Feedback is especially welcome on ds4-specific settings, model detection, and assumptions that may need to change as the server evolves.