Problem
On MacBooks with a notch the full menu-bar label (Session 39% · Week 45% · Fable 60%, ~250pt wide) often doesn't fit — macOS silently hides status items that don't have room, so the app appears to not start at all even though the process is running fine.
Proposal
Make the display mode an explicit user choice instead of always rendering the full text label:
- Icon-only — just the mascot icon in the menu bar; all windows (Session / Week / per-model) with progress bars stay in the drop-down menu. Optionally surface a compact
⚠ NN% next to the icon when any window crosses the warn threshold.
- Full text — current behavior:
Session 39% · Week 45% · Fable 60% list in the bar.
The choice should be surfaced to the user (first-run prompt, a toggle in the drop-down menu, or at least a documented LIMITSCHECKER_ICON_ONLY=1 env var) rather than hardcoded, since the right mode depends on how crowded the user's menu bar is.
Notes
- A working draft of the icon-only mode exists (env
LIMITSCHECKER_ICON_ONLY, falls back to a ◔ glyph when no icon file is found; shows ⚠ <worst>% on warn) — can be upstreamed.
- Also worth mentioning the notch/hidden-item pitfall in
macos/README.md, since a healthy process with an invisible status item is very confusing to debug.
Problem
On MacBooks with a notch the full menu-bar label (
Session 39% · Week 45% · Fable 60%, ~250pt wide) often doesn't fit — macOS silently hides status items that don't have room, so the app appears to not start at all even though the process is running fine.Proposal
Make the display mode an explicit user choice instead of always rendering the full text label:
⚠ NN%next to the icon when any window crosses the warn threshold.Session 39% · Week 45% · Fable 60%list in the bar.The choice should be surfaced to the user (first-run prompt, a toggle in the drop-down menu, or at least a documented
LIMITSCHECKER_ICON_ONLY=1env var) rather than hardcoded, since the right mode depends on how crowded the user's menu bar is.Notes
LIMITSCHECKER_ICON_ONLY, falls back to a◔glyph when no icon file is found; shows⚠ <worst>%on warn) — can be upstreamed.macos/README.md, since a healthy process with an invisible status item is very confusing to debug.