Glim

A glimpse at your agents. Then back to your flow.

A minimal desktop island for Claude Code and Codex CLI, on macOS and Windows. On a MacBook it wraps the notch. Live activity, context, token usage, and reported task progress stay above your workspace. Your data stays on your device.

Try it on the website → The page runs the real island on sample sessions. Ask for approval, finish a turn or hit an error, and watch it react. Nothing to install.

Download for macOS or Windows · Docs · Changelog · Compatibility · Development

Glim is not code-signed yet, so the first time you open it, your system warns about it.

• macOS says “Glim.app” Not Opened. Click Done, not Move to Trash. Open System Settings, Privacy & Security, scroll down to Security, and click Open Anyway beside Glim, then confirm with your password. The button shows for about an hour after macOS stops Glim; if it is not there, open Glim again first. Or, in Terminal: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Glim.app.
• Windows SmartScreen may warn on first run: choose More info, then Run anyway.

What it does

• A compact island attached to the top of your selected display; on a Mac with a notch, it grows out of the notch, with nothing drawn where the camera is. Its width fits the live status, and long text scrolls into view.
• Rotating session previews, with new approvals, questions, completions, errors and usage limits briefly taking priority. They then wait in a list under the island that folds into a strip of colored dots, one per waiting agent.
• Click the preview to expand; click its header again or outside the island to collapse. The expanded view keeps your selected session stable.
• Hold the preview or header for 350 ms to move the island left or right; it presses in when picked up, glides on when thrown, and centres when let go near the middle. With the preview focused, Alt + Left/Right moves it by keyboard.
• Enable Quick options in Settings to reveal a small round ⋯ button after hovering over the collapsed preview. Choose shortcuts and drag them into order. Centre, monitoring, Settings, usage, agent setup and Quit are available. Right click or Shift + F10 opens the enabled shortcuts. Centre and Quit are also in Settings; Quit remains in the tray menu.
• Reported token counts, cached reads, context usage, and structured task steps.
• Account limits and reset times when Claude Code supplies them, and a Limit reached state when Claude Code or Codex stops at a usage limit.
• A glow in the color of what waits, from off to bright under Glow in Settings.
• Compact in Settings closes the island to Mini, a small black notch holding just Glim, or Glim only, Glim alone in the color of what it shows. Hover Glim and the island grows out of it, or turn off Show the island on hover to keep just Glim.
• Hidden over a fullscreen app or while idle, the island slides up into the top of the screen, and slides back down when it returns.
• The full message an agent left, in a scrolling panel beside the open island.
• Local daily usage charts and 30-day retention.
• One-click, reversible connectors that preserve existing agent configuration.
• Go to agent brings the agent's terminal or editor to the front; on a Mac it also selects its tab in Terminal and iTerm2.
• Menu-bar or tray icon, optional start at login, fullscreen hiding, reduced motion, and keyboard navigation.
• In-app updates: Check in Settings finds a newer release, verifies its signature, and installs it in place.

Getting started

1. Download Glim from the website or Releases: Glim_<version>_universal.dmg for macOS 13 or later (Apple silicon and Intel), or Glim_<version>_x64-setup.exe for Windows 11. On a Mac, drag Glim to Applications; on Windows, run the installer.
2. Open Glim. Connect Claude Code, Codex, or both in onboarding. Glim previews the configuration entries it will add and saves backups.
3. For Codex, choose Add Codex hooks in Glim, then open the Codex CLI and enter /hooks. Review and trust the Glim hooks there. Hooks added means Glim wrote the configuration; Codex must trust it before live hooks can run. Glim cannot confirm that trust setting or approve it for you.
4. Start a new agent session as usual. No separate Glim account or API key is required.
5. Click the island for details. Use Glim's menu-bar or tray icon to open settings, pause, or quit.

Glim needs to stay running to monitor activity. Closing settings returns to the agent in the same notch; Quit Glim stops collection. Choose whether to keep a small idle pill or hide it until activity.

Try the interface

To look around without building anything, open the website: it runs the same island on sample sessions. To run it locally:

npm ci
npm run dev

Open http://127.0.0.1:1420. The browser preview explicitly uses sample sessions; it does not track your computer. Add ?demo=0 to view the empty state. The installed desktop app never displays sample data.

Open http://127.0.0.1:1420/preview for all app views, including notch states, setup, settings, history, logos, and the mascot. The interactive notch lets you switch activity and views without reloading, so you can inspect transitions. Live mode renders the actual components and updates as you edit. Use Screenshots for a saved comparison, or open any view on its own.

With the development server running, capture every view:

npm run preview:capture

This uses installed Chrome by default (npx playwright install chromium and GLIM_TEST_BROWSER=chromium are an alternative). PNG captures stay in ignored .cache/preview-screenshots/, appear automatically in the gallery, and can be downloaded individually. The gallery and capture server are available only during development and are excluded from the desktop bundle.

Build the app

Install Node.js 22.12+ (or 24+) and Rust. On Windows, use the Rust MSVC toolchain and Visual Studio C++ Build Tools with the Windows SDK; WebView2 is required for desktop development, and the installer handles it for users. On macOS 13 or later, install the Xcode Command Line Tools.

npm ci
npm run desktop

Create an installer for the system you are on:

npm run package

The Windows setup executable is in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/nsis/; the macOS app and disk image are in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/macos/ and dmg/. See development instructions for checks, isolated testing, and packaging.

See architecture for the collection pipeline, native windows, and provider adapters.

Privacy

Glim collects locally. It stores counters, provider/model/project names, task labels, and session state in usage.sqlite3, in ~/Library/Application Support/Glim on macOS and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Glim on Windows. It does not store prompts, assistant messages, tool arguments, tool outputs, or provider authentication tokens. Agent transcripts are read in memory to extract usage and structured tasks. While a session is open, the island previews the agent's latest words: its last message, its question, or the command it asks to run. That preview lives in memory only and is never written to disk.

Configuration backups and connector manifests are in the same folder. Backups preserve the original agent configuration and may contain values you already saved in that configuration; treat them as private. Clearing usage history keeps ingestion cursors and deduplication baselines so old records cannot refill the chart.

There is no telemetry or cloud sync. Glim goes online only when you click Check under Updates in Settings, to read the latest release from GitHub. The helper sends a small allow-listed event to a local channel only the current user can open: a socket in your private temporary folder on macOS, a named pipe on Windows. On Windows, uninstalling removes Glim-owned agent hooks and the startup entry; local history is retained unless cleared in settings or you tick Also delete my usage history when uninstalling. On macOS, turn off each agent in Settings before moving Glim to the Trash, so Glim restores your configuration.

Contributing

Glim's original code is MIT licensed. See third-party notices for Three.js, the bundled Manrope font and the provider marks, and CONTRIBUTING.md to contribute. Agent record formats evolve; sanitized adapter fixtures and compatibility reports are especially useful. Please never attach real prompts, credentials, or unredacted transcripts to issues. Report security issues privately, as described in SECURITY.md.