Show HN: A terminal glued to the macOS dock

Posted by leopalamim 19 hours ago

Every single day of my life since I started programming back in 2020 I open my projects through the terminal/ghostty. "cd path" + "code .". Until today I don't even know how to open vscode first then open a project from there.

I usually have 3-4 vscode windows open at the same time, and I like them in separate desktops (for mac users). i gotta admit, i use 8 desktops, 3-4 for vscode, 1 for arc, 1 for docker, 1 for postman etc.

So my daily routine when I turned on my mac was: (1) open ghostty; (2) cd-path+code.; (3) drag the vscode window to a desired desktop; (4) get back to the ghostty desktop; (5) repeat until all is open.

i was unbothered for 6y. Until i realized how inefficient i was being: (1) opening ghostty just to run one-off commands to open another app felt wrong, like why do I need a terminal if it's not a process I need to watch; (2) the need to go back to the ghostty desktop every time i wanted to open a new project and drag it to a new desktop and switch back... it's funny how we simply accept a habit and don't bother to fix it

i wanted a terminal that persisted across desktops AND that was always visible so i could access it anytime AND that wasn't big because i would only run one-off commands. so I created starboard.

where could I fit a terminal that was always visible and accessible? i looked at the macOS dock, i looked at the empty space to its right, and I said "that's it".

starboard is a floating terminal window that's literally glued to the dock, filling the blank space to the right, tracking its height and position live. it's visible from any desktop, a real companion to the dock, and it's a persistent shell.

to close the story on my routine, I now can happily jump straight to the desktop i want my project to be in and open it there through Starboard. i rarely open ghostyy, unless i really need it.

here's where feedback is massively important. i built this for the way i work with it, the way my dock is, which is in the bottom. my dock's position and height give me a perfect sized Starboard with 3 visible lines that I can happily work with. hearing from you guys how it appears to you would be essential for further improvement.

Comments

Comment by leopalamim 4 hours ago

got some people using starboard so some updates:

(1) starboard now expands to full height, you can run agents and longer processes now

(2) starboard is now also a downloadable app, macOS will warn the dev can't be verified because it's ad-hoc signed, just hit privacy & security -> open anyway, step by step in the README.md

(3) source is still there if you want to read it yourself and build

Comment by Maphielbso 19 hours ago

Original idea, I like it. Can you expand it vertically in order to show larger chunks of output if needed?

Comment by leopalamim 16 hours ago

i thought about it, but starboard is glued to the dock. I'm thinking of two alternatives: (1) make it expand as needed; (2) a button to open a terminal/ghostty window.

what use case are you thinking for starboard? running agents?

Comment by leopalamim 15 hours ago

hey Maphielbso, now Cmd+E expands it to 100% height when you need to see larger chunks, and btw I started running my agents in starboard because of this... nice call. Cmd+E snaps it back to dock height

Comment by nottorp 11 hours ago

Isn’t it the quake console but desktop wide?

Not that I dislike it.

Comment by leopalamim 11 hours ago

it's a nice framing, it's the same family, but think of starboard as a quake console that's never dismissed and never steals focus, glued to the dock in a way that doesn't interfere with anything else, an now expands for longer processes (i.e. running agents) thanks to your feedbacks

Comment by toplinesoftsys 8 hours ago

I love it. No need to deal with windows just for the sake of one or two commands.