CodexWinBar 🎚️ — May your tokens never run out. Now on Windows.

Every AI coding limit, on your Windows 11 taskbar.

CodexWinBar is a native Windows 11 rebuild of steipete/CodexBar (the macOS menu-bar app, MIT). It puts your AI coding-provider usage limits directly on the taskbar — embedded next to the system tray so it looks like it was always part of Windows — with per-provider session and weekly windows, reset countdowns, credits, and live provider-status incidents.

What it does

• Taskbar-embedded widget — a compact chip rendered inside Shell_TrayWnd (true SetParent embedding with per-pixel alpha, validated by a runtime capability probe) showing tiny session/weekly gauges and percent text per provider. It sizes itself to the free space beside your taskbar apps, collapsing from full gauges → single gauge → compact icons as you add providers (never a scrollbar), and gently bounces the provider you're on pace to run out of first. If embedding isn't possible on your build, it automatically falls back to a tracked overlay; Explorer restarts re-embed automatically.
• Fluent flyout — click the widget for provider cards: usage bars, "resets in 2h 13m" countdowns, model-specific windows, reset credits, credit balances, plan/account identity, and live status incidents (Statuspage/Google Workspace feeds). Optional pace indicator projects whether you're on track to run out early, and clicking a provider opens its web dashboard. Acrylic backdrop, rounded corners, light/dark aware.
• Native engine — zero-dependency .NET 9: OAuth token refresh, per-provider fetch pipelines with fallback strategies, single-flight coalescing, reset-boundary refresh (re-poll ~30s after a window resets), quota threshold notifications.
• Config-compatible with CodexBar — reads/writes the same ~/.config/codexbar/config.json (CODEXBAR_CONFIG and legacy ~/.codexbar honored; unknown fields and providers round-trip untouched), so a dotfile-synced setup works across macOS and Windows.

Providers (v1)

Provider	Source	Auth
Codex	ChatGPT backend usage + reset credits	Browser OAuth built into CodexWinBar (auto-refresh)
Claude	api.anthropic.com OAuth usage	Browser OAuth built into CodexWinBar (auto-refresh)
Copilot	copilot_internal/user quota snapshots	GitHub device flow (built into Settings)
OpenRouter	credits + key limits	API key
OpenAI Admin	org cost dashboards	Admin API key
z.ai	coding-plan quota	API key
Cursor	plan + Auto/Composer + on-demand usage	Browser session cookie

CodexWinBar does not require Codex CLI, Claude Code, or Codex Desktop to be installed. Connect Codex, Claude, and Copilot from Settings → Providers using their built-in browser sign-ins. The rest are enabled there with the credential type shown above. Upstream's 50+ provider catalog is on the roadmap — the remaining browser-cookie and WebView2 seams (Windsurf, Ollama quota, …) are deferred to a later release.

Install

Fastest — one line of PowerShell, no admin, no SmartScreen prompt:

irm https://codexwinbar.webivize.com | iex

This grabs the latest release, verifies its SHA-256 against the checksum GitHub publishes for the asset, and installs it per-user. Because the download runs through PowerShell (not a browser) it never picks up the Mark of the Web, so there's no "Unknown publisher" prompt. The script is short and readable — it only ever downloads from this repo's own GitHub releases.

Updating

From version 1.1.8 onward, open Settings → General → App updates to check, download, and restart into the latest release. If the taskbar widget is inaccessible, Settings can also be opened directly:

& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\CodexWinBar\current\CodexWinBar.exe" --settings

Older installs can update in place by running the one-line installer again. There is no need to uninstall or delete anything: it detects a missing, outdated, or current installation and performs an install, update, or repair as appropriate while preserving provider sign-ins and settings.

Or with winget:

winget install ItayCohen.CodexWinBar

⏳ winget is in review (winget-pkgs #398215). Until it merges, use the PowerShell command above or the direct download.

Either way it installs per-user (no admin), adds Start-Menu and desktop shortcuts, launches automatically, and self-updates. After installing, connect the providers you use in Settings → Providers — Codex, Claude and Copilot sign in through your browser; OpenRouter, OpenAI Admin, z.ai and Cursor take an API key or cookie. Nothing is connected until you sign in.

Direct download / build from source

Direct download: grab CodexWinBar-win-Setup.exe from the Releases page and run it. Because it isn't code-signed yet, Windows SmartScreen shows an "Unknown publisher" prompt — click More info → Run anyway (one-time). The PowerShell command and winget both avoid this.

Build from source: requires Windows 11 and the .NET 9 SDK.

git clone https://github.com/ItayCohen-Prog/CodexWinBar.git
cd CodexWinBar
dotnet publish src/CodexWinBar.App/CodexWinBar.App.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained -p:PublishSingleFile=true -p:PublishReadyToRun=true -o artifacts/publish
artifacts\publish\CodexWinBar.exe

To produce a full installer locally: ./build/pack-windows.ps1 (needs dotnet tool install -g vpk --version 1.2.0).

Right-click the widget (or the tray icon) for Refresh / Settings / Quit. "Launch at login" lives in Settings → General. Logs: %LOCALAPPDATA%\CodexWinBar\logs\app.log.

Privacy

CodexWinBar keeps your credentials on your machine. Its built-in provider sign-ins store OAuth sessions encrypted for your Windows user under %LOCALAPPDATA%\CodexWinBarData\credentials, and it talks only to each provider's own API to fetch your usage — there is no CodexWinBar server, account, or telemetry, and nothing about your usage leaves your computer.

Architecture

C# / .NET 9, one runtime dependency — Velopack for the installer and auto-update; the app itself otherwise has zero external NuGet dependencies (test projects excepted):

• CodexWinBar.Core — provider abstraction (descriptor + ordered fetch strategies), CodexBar-compatible config store, refresh scheduler, status poller.
• CodexWinBar.Providers — one folder per provider; contributions need only a descriptor + strategy + parser.
• CodexWinBar.Widget — pure Win32: taskbar interop, embed/overlay state machine on a dedicated STA thread, GDI+ → UpdateLayeredWindow renderer.
• CodexWinBar.App — WPF shell: flyout, settings, tray icon, quota notifications, single instance.

Design docs and the upstream protocol research live in docs/windows-port/.

Credits & license

This is a fork/rebuild of CodexBar by Peter Steinberger — all product concepts, provider protocol research, and the original macOS implementation are his. The Windows port reuses upstream's provider documentation (docs/) as its protocol source of truth.

MIT — same as upstream.