Free & Open Source

Know your burn rate
before it matters.

EmberBar lives in your macOS menu bar, tracking Claude AI usage in real time — burn rate predictions, peak hour warnings, and smart notifications built for Claude Max users.

Download for macOS View on GitHub

Free forever·macOS 13+·No account needed·Privacy-first

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62%
Tue 1 Apr  14:32
EmberBar
Claude Max
Session 62%
3h 21m ~11–25 msgs left
Burn Rate Light
Limit in 2h 37m
Weekly 19%
3d 4h
Peak Hours Active
2× burn rate until 7:00 pm BST
Updated 0m ago
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Lives quietly in your menu bar. Click to see your usage at a glance.

What it does

Built for heavy Claude users.

Everything you need to stay on top of your usage — without opening a dashboard.

🔥
Burn Rate Prediction

See how fast you're consuming your allowance and get an estimated time until the limit — before you hit it mid-conversation.

⚡
Peak Hour Detection

Claude counts usage 2× during peak hours. EmberBar warns you so you can plan heavier work outside those windows.

🔔
Smart Notifications

Get alerted at 75%, 90%, or when your burn rate spikes — notifications that only fire when they actually matter.

📊
Session & Weekly View

Track both the 5-hour session window and the 7-day rolling window in one glance, with time-to-reset for each.

🔒
Privacy First

No analytics, no telemetry, no servers. Your session cookie stays in macOS Keychain. EmberBar never phones home.

🍎
Native macOS

Built with Swift and SwiftUI. Tiny memory footprint, instant launch, and full support for macOS dark mode.

Setup in minutes

Three steps
and you're tracking.

No account, no OAuth, no config file. Just install and go.

1
Download & Install

Grab the latest release from GitHub. Drag EmberBar into your Applications folder. It launches straight into the menu bar — no dock icon, no clutter.

First launch: open Terminal, run xattr -cr /Applications/EmberBar.app
2
Sign in to Claude

EmberBar opens a built-in browser where you log in with your email — your session is detected automatically. No DevTools, no copy-paste needed. If the browser method doesn't work for you, there's a manual cookie fallback option too.

Email sign-in → auto-detected → done  |  or paste cookie manually
3
Watch your ember burn

EmberBar polls your usage every 60 seconds and shows the percentage right in your menu bar. Click to see burn rate, peak warnings, and time-to-reset at a glance.

Open Source

Built in public.
Trusted by design.

Tools that touch your Claude session should be transparent. EmberBar is fully open source — audit the code, contribute, or fork it.

Star on GitHub Download Free
MIT License Swift 5.9+ macOS 13+ No telemetry Keychain storage
FAQ

Honest answers.

Claude Max is Anthropic's $100/month plan with significantly higher usage limits than Pro. Those limits still reset on a rolling 5-hour window and a 7-day window. When you're deep in a project it's easy to burn through more than you realise. EmberBar makes that visible.
Yes. Your cookie is stored in macOS Keychain — the same secure storage Safari and 1Password use. EmberBar only reads from Claude's usage API. It never sends your cookie anywhere else, and there are no EmberBar servers at all. You can verify this by reading the source code on GitHub.
EmberBar includes a built-in browser where you sign in to Claude with your email. Your session is detected automatically — no DevTools or cookie copying needed. Anthropic doesn't offer a public usage API, so this authenticated approach is the only way to read your usage data. There's also a manual cookie fallback if the browser method doesn't work for you.
EmberBar isn't notarised with Apple yet (it requires a paid Developer ID certificate). On first launch, macOS Gatekeeper will block it. To fix this, open Terminal and run: xattr -cr /Applications/EmberBar.app — then open EmberBar normally. You only need to do this once. This is standard for indie and open-source macOS apps distributed outside the App Store.
EmberBar requires macOS Ventura (13.0) or later. It's built natively with SwiftUI and uses modern macOS APIs — no Electron, no web views for the UI itself.
During certain hours, Anthropic applies 2× usage weighting — each message counts double against your limit. EmberBar detects when you're in a peak window and shows a warning so you can decide whether to keep going or wait. The exact hours vary by plan and region.
It should work, though it's primarily designed and tested for Claude Max users who need burn rate predictions most. If you're on Pro, the usage data is still surfaced — you just have lower limits so the burn rate feature is more situational.