Dev Tray

localhost, organized. A tiny Windows tray app that tracks your dev servers across projects.

Work across a few projects and you end up with a pile of localhost tabs and terminal windows. Which port is 3001? Is that old server still running? Dev Tray sits in your system tray and scans for local dev servers every few seconds. It shows which project each one belongs to, so you can open or stop any of them without hunting for the right terminal.

Status: early alpha (v0.1.0), Windows-only. It works day to day, but expect rough edges and breaking changes. Issues and PRs welcome.

What it does

• Finds listening dev servers on TCP ports 1024-49151 and rescans every few seconds.
• Groups them by project, the Git repo each server runs from, and shows the current branch.
• Shows a liveness dot per server. Green when the server answers, dimmed when the port is open but nothing responds.
• Opens a server in your browser or stops it in one click. Stopping kills the whole process tree, not just the parent.
• Copies the URL or port from a right-click menu.
• Shows a live count in the tray icon. Grey for none, green for running.
• Lets you set the refresh interval (2/5/10/30s) and launch at login.

Using it

• Open the popover. Left-click the Dev Tray icon in your system tray.
• Open or stop a server. Each row has an ↗ button to open it in your browser and an ✕ button to stop it.
• Copy or open. Right-click a row for Copy URL, Copy Port, Open in Browser, and Kill Server.
• Collapse a project. Click a project heading to fold its servers away. The stop button beside the heading kills every server in that project at once.
• Settings and quit. The top-right ⋯ opens settings (refresh interval, launch at login). The power button quits Dev Tray.

Privacy

Dev Tray runs entirely on your machine. No accounts, no sign-in, no telemetry, no external network calls. The only connections it makes are health checks to 127.0.0.1, your own computer, to see which servers respond.

To name the project a server belongs to, Dev Tray reads that process's working directory from Windows, the folder you started the server in, then looks for a nearby Git repository. Reading another process's details this way is unusual for everyday apps, so antivirus tools sometimes flag it. Here it only turns a port number into a project name, locally. Nothing leaves your device.

Install

Download (recommended)

Grab the latest Windows installer from the Releases page and run it. Dev Tray launches straight into your system tray.

No release published yet? Build it yourself with Build a Windows installer, or run from source.

Uninstall

Dev Tray installs like any other Windows program. Remove it from Settings > Apps > Installed apps (or Control Panel > Programs and Features). If you ran it from source, just delete the folder.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11
• Node.js 18+ and npm (to run or build from source)
• PowerShell (Windows PowerShell 5.1 or PowerShell 7, both work)
• Git on PATH (optional, only needed to show branch names)

Run from source

npm install
npm start

Native scanner (optional, Phase 6)

The Rust addon in packages/scan-native is not required for day-to-day dev yet (PowerShell worker is still the default). To build it:

# Rust stable + Visual Studio Build Tools (Desktop development with C++)
npm run build:native

Produces packages/scan-native/scan-native.win32-x64-msvc.node. Run npm run test:native for shape tests and a live scan smoke check when the .node file is present.

The app launches into the system tray with no taskbar window. Click the tray icon to open the popover.

Build a Windows installer

npm run dist      # NSIS installer in dist/
npm run pack      # unpacked app in dist/win-unpacked/ (no installer)

scan-worker.ps1 ships as an extraResource and resolves from process.resourcesPath in packaged builds.

Troubleshooting

• ENOENT ... path.txt on npm start. npm install finished but Electron's binary didn't download. Run node node_modules/electron/install.js once, or reinstall with network access.
• No branch names shown. Dev Tray needs git on your PATH. Servers still appear without it.
• A server isn't detected. Working-directory detection can't read elevated, 32-bit, or other-user processes. See known limitations.

How it works

One resident PowerShell worker (scan-worker.ps1) answers a scan per poll. It lists listening ports, maps them to PIDs, and reads each process's real working directory from its PEB. Keeping the worker warm holds scans around 500 ms. Dev Tray then walks up to the nearest .git for the repo name and branch, and drops anything that isn't a real dev server.

The full discovery pipeline, project-detection precedence, and limitations live in docs/ARCHITECTURE.md. The reasoning behind each product decision lives in the ADRs.

Contributing

Contributions welcome. Open an issue or PR. Working conventions and notes for both humans and AI agents live in AGENTS.md. The product spec is in docs/PRODUCT.md and the architecture in docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

License

MIT