Is GitHub Having a Good Day? A macOS Menu Bar App Built with Copilot CLI

This is a submission for the GitHub Copilot CLI Challenge

What I Built

Is GitHub having a good day?

GitHub Status Menu Bar is a native macOS menu bar app that answers that question instantly... without opening a browser, Slack, or your phone.

It lives quietly in the menu bar as a single colored indicator (or a full-width, aggressively cheerful menu bar if that’s your thing).

• Green: all good
• Yellow / Red: something is on fire (or at least warming up)

Click it for details: affected services, active incidents, and a quick link to the full status page. No browser tabs, no doomscrolling, no guessing whether it’s you or GitHub.

Why I Built It

I wanted passive, ambient awareness of GitHub incidents without relying on Slack notifications or my phone, which are often on “do not disturb” when I’m in the zone or neckbeard-deep in code / Excel sheets. (This was the case last Tuesday when my phone didn't get notifications about this incident and I was wondering if it was just me.)

I just wanted to know - at a glance - whether I should keep debugging / troubleshooting or go make coffee and wait it out.

Demo

🔗 Repo: https://github.com/leereilly/github-status-for-macos-menu-bar

When you launch the app, a small colored dot appears in your menu bar. That’s it. That’s the UI. Click it to reveal a detailed status panel with live updates every 60 seconds.

My Experience with GitHub Copilot CLI

I’ve been on macOS for... *checks watch*... 20 some years. Somehow, I had never built an Xcode project before this. I approached this with a healthy mix of curiosity and low-grade fear.

• Hours spent reading Apple docs: 0
• Hours spent debugging inscrutable Xcode errors: 0
• Hours spent writing tests: 0
• Hours spent doom-scrolling Stack Overflow: 0
• Hours spent downloading and installing Xcode: 0.5
• Hours minutes spent building MVP: 5

I initially planned to consume GitHub’s Status RSS feed. Copilot CLI suggested using the API endpoints ^{1, 2} instead, which I didn’t even know existed. That suggestion alone changed the shape of the implementation.

Copilot CLI helped me:

• Bootstrap SwiftUI and MenuBarExtra patterns quickly
• Turn “I want a dot that changes color” into actual Swift enums, views, and state
• Shape async/await networking against the GitHub Status API
• Sanity-check macOS entitlements and sandbox requirements

Copilot CLI didn’t design the app for me, but it removed friction, unblocked decisions, and let me stay focused on what I was building instead of how macOS works. I'll save that for another day!

Check it out and give it a ⭐️

leereilly / github-status-for-macos-menu-bar

Real-time GitHub service status in your macOS menu bar.

GitHub Status Menu Bar

A native macOS menu bar app that monitors GitHub's service status in real-time.

Built using GitHub Copilot CLI for the GitHub Copilot CLI Challenge.

Features

• 🟢 Real-time Status - Colored menu bar icon shows GitHub's current status
  • Green = All systems operational
  • Yellow = Minor service outage / degraded performance
  • Red = Major outage
• 📋 Detailed View - Click to see affected components and active incidents
• 🔔 Notifications - Get notified when GitHub's status changes
• 🚀 Launch at Login - Optionally start automatically when you log in
• ⚡ Lightweight - Native SwiftUI app with minimal resource usage

Screenshots

The app displays a colored circle in your menu bar:

Status	Icon
All Systems Operational	🟢
Minor Outage	🟡
Major Outage	🔴

Requirements

• macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later
• Xcode 15.0+ (for building)

Installation

From Source

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/gh-status-macos-menu-bar.git
   cd gh-status-macos-menu-bar

2. Open in Xcode:

   open

   …

View on GitHub

Note: I'm a GitHub employee, so I'll rule myself out of any prizes. I'd still love the participation ribbon tho'!