https://grainworks.tech/tags/swift/Recent content in Swift on grainworksHugoen-USMon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://grainworks.tech/posts/statbar-build-log/Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://grainworks.tech/posts/statbar-build-log/<p>StatBar is a floating macOS system monitor built in about two and a half hours on June 15, 2026. It lives at the bottom-left corner of the screen: a 250px-wide translucent panel showing CPU, GPU, Memory, Network, Disk utilization, and running Ollama models, refreshing every two seconds. The entire thing compiles with <code>swiftc</code> — no Xcode project, no package manager, no dependencies beyond the macOS SDK.</p> <h2 id="the-framework">The Framework</h2> <p>The initial specification was straightforward but deliberate: a native floating panel (not a menu bar app or web-based dashboard), reading hardware counters directly through Mach and IOKit APIs, rendered in SwiftUI hosted on a borderless NSWindow. No Electron, no web views, no polling shell commands. CPU from two-sample <code>host_statistics</code> deltas, memory from <code>vm_statistics64</code>, GPU core utilization from the IOKit AGXAccelerator performance counters, network rates from <code>getifaddrs</code>, disk from filesystem attributes, and Ollama state from the local API. All collected on a background queue so the UI never freezes. Compiled with <code>swiftc -O -target arm64-apple-macosx26.0 -parse-as-library</code> — one file, one shell script, zero Xcode involvement.</p>