Keep your processes running, monitored, and accessible
Sentinel is a macOS menu bar app for long-running processes. Set your script running, view the output only when you need it, keep it alive, but also keep it out of your way.
Built for things that keep running
Sentinel isn't intended to be a quick-launch list. It's a place to manage the processes that you want to be persistent, but in a way that makes them easier to check in on than just starting them as background tasks or tmux sessions.
Local Dev Servers
Run your frontend website, API, and database proxy side-by-side, each with its own live log, instead of a wall of terminal tabs you lose track of.
Watchers & Workers
Test runners, file watchers, background queue workers — long-lived processes that should keep going without holding a terminal window hostage.
Large Language Models
Keep your local language models running and monitored using your favourite command line tools.
Tunnels & Proxies
Keep an ngrok or 'cloudflared' tunnel up for a demo or webhook testing, and know immediately if it drops.
Databases & Caches
Run Postgres, Redis, or Docker Compose stacks alongside your app, with a live log if a container starts crash-looping.
Build & Bundlers
Keep a webpack, Vite, or asset watcher running in the background so rebuilds happen without a dedicated terminal tab.
How it works
Add a script once, start and stop it from the menu bar, and see it's actually alive.
Add a script
Give the entry a name, the name of the script that starts it, a working directory, and optionally add it to a folder.
Start it from the menu bar
It runs in the background for as long as it needs to — no terminal window to keep open, no risk of an accidental manual interruption.
Watch it live
Open the log window any time to tail stdout and stderr, spot a crash, and restart — even hours after you started it.
Beyond the menu bar
Sentinel provides simple structures to help you organise your scripts makes it easy to get at your results, and enables you to manage your scripts through your favourite automation tools.
Categorise & Search
Each script definition can be added to a simple category structure to help organise your list, and you can access an easy search across all your scripts right from the menu bar.
View, Copy, Export
As well as being able to view the output of your scripts, you can also copy the output to the system clipboard or export it to a file ready for analysis or logging.
CLI, URLs, AppleScript, Shortcuts
Sentinel is a first class automation client. Use your favourite tools to manage what starts and stops when, and grab output directly without viewing the log.
Screenshots
The user interface is purposefully simple to get out of your way and let you .
Get Sentinel
Sentinel is ready to serve, and details on installation are provided below.
Direct Download
Manual installation is quite simple.
- Download the DMG file below.
- Open the DMG to mount it
- Drag the Sentinel app into your Applications folder.
Homebrew
You can install Sentinel via Homebrew using the terminal command below.
brew install --cask sylumer/tap/sentinel
Say Thank You
Sentinel is Coffeeware. It is 100% free to use. You owe me nothing.
If it earns its keep in your menu bar you can say thank you with a coffee.
