What it does
My local dev setup kept breaking in small ways: a port taken by a forgotten process, AI editors' chat databases quietly eating tens of GB, a browser debug instance I forgot to close, a daemon slowly leaking memory. Pharos puts all of that in one menu-bar popover, so I can see it and fix it in seconds instead of digging through Terminal: Projects × ports (which project owns which port, with sub-process memory); Memory Bloat Doctor (new in v3.1.0): finds runaway macOS daemons across 8 categories, one-click reclaim or launchctl disable; Fan Cockpit: fan & temperature control, with GPU-load reduction (Fans page CPU ~50.3% → ~4.3% in the v3.1.0 notes); Battery: charge limit with a root daemon that survives sleep/reboot, plus a lid-closed battery guard; Browser instances: Chrome / Edge / Brave debug ports, proxies, profiles; AI IDE cleanup: inspect and clean chat databases for 23+ editors (Cursor, Qoder, Claude Code and more) — it shows the size first, and frees exactly what it shows; Clash / Mihomo proxy isolation, dual light/dark icons, Homebrew / CLI tools management.
How I built it
Native Swift macOS menu-bar app, zero dependencies, fully offline — no account, no cloud, no network calls. Built 2026-10-10–14; v3.1.0 shipped 2026-11-05 inside this hackathon's window. Repo: https://github.com/Zhengyuuuui/Pharos — Releases (DMG ~9.5 MB): https://github.com/Zhengyuuuui/Pharos/releases
What I learned
The hard part was not any single feature but making a dozen small system views (ports, daemons, fans, battery, browsers, chat databases) agree in one popover without the app itself becoming a resource hog — which is why the v3.1.0 Fan Cockpit work (CPU ~50.3% → ~4.3%) mattered.
What's next
Verify the v3.1.0 DMG on a second Mac, then publish the download announcement; finish the free-vs-Pro pricing boundary document (documentation-only; offline license validation, since Pharos does not network).
Built With
- macos
- swift
