Show HN: A terminal glued to the macOS dock

(github.com)

52 points | by leopalamim 3 days ago

10 comments

  • prabhanjana_c 2 hours ago
    Great tried the Starboard.zip, opened in Dock, after given permission. it works. some caveats Cmd+E expands hight, but not width. also default width is may be around 4 to 5 characters. It think it may be related to auto hide property of dock. mine is MacBook Pro (macOS Tahoe version 26.5.1)

    My workflow as of today is open a terminal at documents/claude_mac_master folder , with Claude Code cli. always running. this is my master for all frequent tasks.

    frequent commands I use on that. - 1. open vscode for project with name (it searches and finds the matching folder and then opens the vscode, then onwards it remembers my top 10 projects or folders working on ), 2. move the recently downloaded images to right folder. 3. create a new experimental project with following vision, in the right folder, open it in cmux (another agentic terminal) , with vision.md so that I will continue to work on that. 4. check disk sizes, and any cleanup.

    would like to run the any cli agent in this terminal with default operations.

  • Maphielbso 3 days ago
    Original idea, I like it. Can you expand it vertically in order to show larger chunks of output if needed?
    • leopalamim 3 days 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?

    • leopalamim 3 days 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
    • nottorp 2 days ago
      Isn’t it the quake console but desktop wide?

      Not that I dislike it.

      • leopalamim 2 days 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
  • leopalamim 2 days 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

  • marshallku 2 days ago
    Seems cool, does it supports dock on the left side? I always place dock in the left side
    • leopalamim 2 days ago
      hey marshallku, it does support. download the newest version. when dock is on the left, starboard defaults to the bottom right corner, same for right side dock and auto hide. what kind of commands are you most using?
  • leopalamim 2 days ago
    starboard currently assumes a bottom dock and 1 monitor. how many of you use left/right dock placement, multi-monitor, and auto-hide? how is your setup? working on improvements in whatever order you guys need
  • toplinesoftsys 2 days ago
    I love it. No need to deal with windows just for the sake of one or two commands.
    • leopalamim 2 days ago
      that's the motivation, how are you using it?
  • j_aime 2 days ago
    Nice! This is pretty inventive.
    • leopalamim 2 days ago
      tks! are you using it for any use case?
  • caiocmpaes 2 days ago
    Nice idea!
    • leopalamim 2 days ago
      tks! are you using it for any use case?
  • NelsonGr 1 day ago
    [dead]