Taskhold in the Mac menu bar
By Jake Marsh, who builds Taskhold. Updated 2026-10-26. Facts about other tools checked 2026-10-26. 1 min read.
SwiftBar and xbar turn any script's output into a menu bar item. This plugin shows the task your agents are on and how far along it is, refreshes every 10 seconds, and opens the live board when you click it.
Raycast users can get the same line in Raycast instead: see Raycast. For alerts rather than a glance, see macOS notifications.
Set it up
- Install the Taskhold CLI and save your key with taskhold-mcp login. Menu bar apps don't see your shell's variables, so the saved key matters.
- Save the plugin as taskhold.10s.sh in your SwiftBar (or xbar) plugin folder. The 10s in the name is the refresh interval.
- Make it executable: chmod +x taskhold.10s.sh. SwiftBar picks it up right away; in xbar, choose Refresh all.
curl -fsSL https://taskhold.com/install.sh | sh
taskhold-mcp login#!/bin/bash
# <xbar.title>Taskhold</xbar.title>
"$HOME/.taskhold/bin/taskhold-mcp" statusline </dev/null
echo "---"
echo "Open live board | href=https://taskhold.com/dashboard/live"One limit to know
SwiftBar and xbar read a | in the first line as the start of display options, so a task title with a | in it is cut short in the menu bar. xbar itself has had no release since 2021; SwiftBar is maintained and reads the same plugins.
See how far along your coding agents are.
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Sources
- SwiftBar README, checked 2026-10-26
- xbar plugin guide, checked 2026-10-26
Related
Updated 2026-10-26. Something wrong or out of date? Email hello@greatwork.company.