Skip to content

A Mac monitor for developers

The Mac, at a glance. Up top, in the notch.

Memory, swap and free disk space in the menu bar. Music, Pomodoro and Claude in the notch. And a warning when free space drops below 5 GB.

Only to tell you about the launch and the list price. No spam. Data controller: [TU NOMBRE]. Privacy policy

  • One-time payment · €19 on the list
  • Under 1% CPU
  • No subscription
The Pulso bar stretched out under the pointer: a black capsule with the icons of Finder, Safari, Mail, Messages, Calendar, Notes, Photos, Music, Xcode, Terminal and Preview. Calendar is enlarged under the pointer, with its name above it on a black label. On the right, in circles, Claude with an orange dot, an event in 25 minutes, 21 degrees and sunny, a link to X and three minimized windows. Further right, set apart, the Trash, empty, in its own black circle.

Three places on the Mac. None of them new.

The menu bar, top right. The notch, top center. And a bar at the bottom that can replace the Dock.

  • Menu barmemory, swap and disk
  • Notchmusic, Pomodoro and Claude
  • Bottom barapps, widgets and panels

Click the notch. The island opens.

Closed, it only takes the space beside the notch. Open, it shows one card and a row of tabs. Switch cards with the tabs or a two-finger swipe. On a Mac without a notch, it floats just below the menu bar.

Open island playing “Tarde en Lisboa” by Costa Azul in Music: artwork, progress bar, controls, output to AirPods and 21 degrees.
What’s playing in any app: Spotify, Music, Podcasts, or YouTube in Safari or Chrome. With artwork, a scrubber and controls.
Open island with a Pomodoro running: an orange ring at 18:41, round 2, with pause and stop buttons.
A 25 + 5 minute Pomodoro, a 5, 10, 15, 25, 45 or 60 minute timer, and a stopwatch. With the island closed, the time stays to the right of the notch.
Open island with Claude: tienda-web has been waiting for 2 minutes, a button to go to the session, and the plan at 37% for the session and 62% for the week.
When Claude Code is waiting for you, the island says so. One click opens its tab in Terminal or iTerm2. Below, with Pro or Max, your plan usage while you use Claude Code.
Open island with the Mac’s battery at 86% and charging, AirPods Pro at 70% and 75%, and the case at 40%. Below, Safari, Xcode and iTerm2 with a Quit button.
The Mac and your AirPods: each earbud and the case. Below, the 3 apps that used the most CPU in the last minute, with a button to quit them.
Open island with the next event: Daily, in 26 minutes, from 12:15 to 12:30.
The next event in the coming 2 hours, and how long until it starts.
Open island with two websites responding: Tienda in 432 ms and Blog in 157 ms, with the last 24 hours at 100%.
Up to 6 websites, checked every 5 minutes. If one goes down, it shows on the closed notch.

And when the disk is nearly full, one more card to free up space.

Memory, swap and disk. In big numbers.

  • Every app with its helper processes added up. Safari and all its tabs, on one line.
  • Dev servers by project, with their port: tienda-web :3000.
  • Claude Code and Codex sessions, with the memory they use.
  • At the top, one line: all clear, or whatever is straining the Mac.
Pulso’s menu bar panel: 62% of memory in use, 0 MB of swap and 128 GB free of 494. Below, Safari at 3.5 GB, Xcode at 1.9 GB, Claude Code with 2 sessions at 742 MB, and the tienda-web server on port 3000.

A second bar at the bottom. It can replace the Dock.

Your apps and, next to them, widgets: Claude, Calendar, minimized windows, Weather and a link to X, Bluesky or any site you choose. The first time, the apps pinned in your Dock move to the bar.

At rest, it’s a circle on the left or a capsule in the middle. When the pointer reaches it, it stretches out and the icons grow in a wave, with the name of the one you point at. The Trash sits on the right, as in the Dock: click it to open it, drop files on it to throw them away, or drop a disk to eject it.

One button in Settings hides the Dock, another brings it back. With the capsule, the bar shrinks to a thin pill when a window covers it and grows back when the pointer comes near.

The Pulso bar stretched out under the pointer: a black capsule with the icons of Finder, Safari, Mail, Messages, Calendar, Notes, Photos, Music, Xcode, Terminal and Preview. Calendar is enlarged under the pointer, with its name above it on a black label. On the right, in circles, Claude with an orange dot, an event in 25 minutes, 21 degrees and sunny, a link to X and three minimized windows. Further right, set apart, the Trash, empty, in its own black circle.

Four panels

Click Claude, Calendar, Weather or Minimized, and the island grows upward. The Claude panel shows each Claude Code session: whether it’s waiting for you, working or stopped, and in which terminal. One click takes you there.

The others: today’s and tomorrow’s calendar, the weather for the next few hours, and your minimized windows, to put them back. Esc or a click outside closes it.

The Claude panel of the Pulso bar: three Claude Code sessions. The tienda-web session has been waiting for you for 4 minutes in Terminal; api has been working for 38 minutes in iTerm, and panel has been stopped for 2 hours in Terminal. Below, one button per widget: Claude, Calendar, Weather, the Link and Minimized.

For developers. And for Claude Code.

37% · 62%

Your Claude plan’s 5-hour session and weekly usage. Turn it on in Settings; with Pro or Max, while you use Claude Code. A heads-up past 80% and 95%.

Each session’s status

Working, waiting or stopped: every Claude Code session. Plus whatever the ones you closed left running.

pulso

A terminal command and a read-only MCP server with 8 tools, for Claude Code, Codex and Cursor.

$ pulso preflight render --expect-gb 8
OK · render · 8 GB previstos

Disco 128 GB libres · swap 0 MB · memoria libre 6,1 GB · temporal 410 MB · 2 sesiones

$ pulso status
Pulso · medido hace 12 s · datos de Pulso.app

Todo en orden.

Memoria   9,9 GB de 16 GB (62 %)
Swap      0 MB
Disco     128 GB libres de 494 GB
Temporal  410 MB
Batería   86 % · cargando
2 sesiones de agentes · 1 servidor · 418 procesos (186 del sistema sin acceso)

App          Tipo      Proc.  Memoria  CPU
Safari       app          14   3,5 GB  4 %
Xcode        app           6   1,9 GB  2 %
Claude Code  agente        5   742 MB  9 %  2 sesiones
tienda-web   servidor      3   412 MB  1 %
Música       app           3   318 MB  0 %
Mail         app           4   246 MB  0 %
iTerm        app           9   180 MB  3 %
Notas        app           2   120 MB  0 %

Output of pulso 0.5.0, in Spanish like the app. Sample figures from a 16 GB Mac.

In a script, pulso preflight render --expect-gb 4 || exit 1 stops before you start if there isn’t enough room.

Under 5 GB. It turns red.

  • under5 GBof free disk space
  • from6 GBof swap
  • 10 min at90%CPU in one app
  • from5 GBin the temp folder
  • down to20%battery, unplugged

Orange before that: under 15 GB of free disk, from 2 GB of swap, or from 2 GB in the temp folder.

And a notification when something spikes

  • An app with high CPU for a long time
  • Memory that keeps growing
  • Huge writes to disk
  • Forgotten dev servers

At most one per app and alert type each hour. You can mute them per app.

Free up space. And look back a year.

What the disk can do without

When the disk is nearly full, the island shows what can go because it gets rebuilt on its own: Xcode caches, Remotion temp files, Prisma logs, and the Homebrew and npm caches.

If Xcode is building or prisma dev is running, that box can’t be checked, and it tells you why.

Open island on Free up space: the disk at 94% with 12 GB free and 9.3 GB that can be freed from Xcode caches, Remotion temp files, Prisma logs and the Homebrew cache, with a button to free 9.3 GB.

History

Memory, swap, free disk and CPU over 1 h, 24 h, 7 days, 30 days and 1 year. Stored on your Mac and exportable to CSV.

Pulso window on the History tab, over 7 days: memory in use averaging 56% with an 86% peak, swap almost always at 0, free disk averaging 133 GB with a low of 127 GB, and CPU averaging 13%. On the right, the peaks, the biggest users and an Export CSV button.

A monitor you barely notice.

  • < 1%CPU
  • ~60 MBof memory
  • 0accounts
  • 0Pulso servers

Everything stays on your Mac. Pulso only goes online for the weather (MET Norway), to look up a city (Apple Maps), to check the websites you add and for Spotify artwork when macOS doesn’t provide it. The details are in the privacy policy.

I built it for my Mac. It has 8 GB.

I work on an 8 GB MacBook Air. It would run out of disk halfway through a render, and with a few Claude Code sessions open, swap went through the roof. I found out too late.

Pulso tells me up top, in numbers, before it happens. And before I start something heavy, I ask it: pulso preflight.

— [TU NOMBRE]

€19, once. For everyone on the list.

One-time payment

€19

list price · VAT included

  • Every feature
  • Every 1.x version
  • No subscription

Before you buy

  • Apple silicon Macs only.
  • macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
  • On a MacBook with a notch, the island sits in the notch. On other Macs, it floats just below the menu bar and only shows up when there’s something to show.
  • The app is in Spanish.
  • Music from other apps depends on macOS. Spotify and Music always work.
  • There’s no trial download. Before you buy, check that your Mac meets the requirements above.

Only to tell you about the launch and the list price. No spam. Data controller: [TU NOMBRE]. Privacy policy

€29 after that. The list price holds for the first two weeks after launch.

Questions. Short answers.

Which Mac do I need?

A Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 14 Sonoma or later. With or without a notch.

Where does the island go on my Mac?

On the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro and on MacBook Air with M2 or later, in the notch. On the rest (MacBook Air M1, 13-inch MacBook Pro, MacBook Neo, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro), it floats below the menu bar.

Does it work on a Mac without a notch?

Yes. The island floats just below the menu bar, in the center, and shows up when there’s something to show, like what’s playing, the timer, a download or a Claude session waiting for you. When there’s nothing, it isn’t there: move the pointer to the top center and it peeks out; click to open it. You can also open it from Pulso’s icon in the menu bar. The same goes for a closed MacBook with an external display.

Does it work on an Intel Mac?

Not yet. It only runs on Apple silicon Macs.

Does anything leave my Mac?

Very little, and nothing to Pulso servers: there are no accounts and no analytics. To MET Norway, the coordinates of your weather city, not your location. To Apple Maps, what you type when looking up that city. To your websites, a check every 5 minutes. To Spotify, the track that’s playing, when macOS doesn’t provide its artwork. Claude limits stay on your Mac: Claude Code provides them. The details are in the privacy policy.

How much does it use?

Under 1% CPU and about 60 MB of memory. With the panel closed, it checks memory, swap and disk every 5 seconds, and everything else once a minute.

Do I need Claude Code?

No. Memory, disk, alerts, music, Pomodoro and the bar all work without it. The Claude tab only shows up when there are sessions.

Can I keep using the Dock?

Yes. At first the Dock stays and the bar floats just above it. You can hide the Dock from Pulso’s settings (it moves to the left, so Mission Control doesn’t put it over the bar, and ⌥⌘D shows it), or turn the bar off and keep the Dock as it was.

What permissions does it ask for?

On first launch, notifications and, with the island on, the Downloads folder (to show downloads in progress). The rest only when you use something: Calendar when you give it access, Accessibility when you give it access for the bar’s minimized windows, and Automation the first time you jump to a Terminal or iTerm2 session, open a new window from an app on the bar, resume Spotify or Music from the island when nothing is playing, or ask the Finder to empty the Trash from the bar. It doesn’t ask for Screen Recording, Location or the keychain.

When is it coming out?

No date yet. Join the list and we’ll email you when it’s out.

Is it a subscription?

No. One-time payment: €19 including VAT for people on the list (for the first two weeks after launch) and €29 after that.

Can I try it first?

There’s no trial download. Before you buy, check that your Mac meets the requirements (under the price, “Before you buy”).

Is Pulso in English?

The app is in Spanish.

What do you do with my email?

We only use it to tell you about the launch and the list price. We don’t sell it or share it with anyone. To delete it, email hola@mgmautomations.es. More in the privacy policy.

How do I remove Pulso?

In Pulso’s settings, go to General and choose “Desinstalar Pulso…” (Uninstall Pulso). Everything goes back to how it was, Dock included.

If you deleted the app by hand and the Dock doesn’t come back (or stays on the left), paste this into Terminal:

defaults delete com.apple.dock autohide-delay
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool false
defaults delete com.apple.dock orientation
killall Dock

Join the list. We’ll email you the day it’s out.

Only to tell you about the launch and the list price. No spam. Data controller: [TU NOMBRE]. Privacy policy