Fire 🔥

An AI-native macOS menu bar, built on Ice. Program the space around the menu bar with local agents and approved Context Scenes.

Multiple maintained forks of Ice exist - that's healthy for the ecosystem.

• stonerl/Thaw is the established maintenance fork. 6,000+ stars, active release cadence, pure focus on Tahoe stability. Pick Thaw if you want a drop-in replacement with no AI surface area.
• Fire (this repo) is an AI-native fork. The differentiator is the embedded MCP server (Model Context Protocol) - AI assistants like Claude, Cursor, and Codex can read and (in fire.7+) modify your menu bar layout. Pick Fire if you want to experiment with AI-assisted menu bar management.
• upstream jordanbaird/Ice remains the canonical project - both Thaw and Fire honor that. Bugs found in either fork that exist upstream should be filed upstream first.

Fire is maintained by Piotr Durlej with AI coding agents as implementation collaborators. The product keeps Ice's excellent menu bar management foundation, then adds a local, approval-gated programming surface for Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode, and other MCP clients.

• Context Scenes bind an app, time, or battery condition to exact menu bar moves and one Fireline payload.
• Fireline shows one useful thing below the notch or menu bar, such as local Codex quota or an exact status item.
• CLI and agent first: Fire ships fire doctor, an MCP bridge, and one canonical program-fire skill for Codex, Claude Code, and OpenCode.
• Fire-authored approval: agents propose; Fire displays and seals the exact condition, items, destinations, and Fireline payload before anything is installed.
• Local by design: no network listener, no cloud account, and no telemetry expansion.

1. Grab the latest Fire-vX.Y.Z.dmg from Releases.
2. Open the DMG. Drag Fire to your Applications folder. Its compatibility-preserving on-disk name remains Ice.app.
3. Launch from /Applications. On first run, macOS may prompt for Accessibility and Screen Recording - grant both.

The DMG is signed with Developer ID Application: Piotr Durlej (R47JTHX25P) and stapled with an offline notarization ticket. First launch works without an internet round-trip; Gatekeeper accepts on macOS 14 (Sonoma) and later, including Tahoe 26.x.

shasum -a 256 Fire-v1.0.2.dmg
spctl -avv --type install Fire-v1.0.2.dmg
# expected: accepted, source=Notarized Developer ID,
# origin=Developer ID Application: Piotr Durlej (R47JTHX25P)

The release page publishes GitHub's SHA-256 digest next to every asset; compare against that value rather than a checksum copied from an older README.

One-time TCC reset is needed after the first install of a signed Fire build over any ad-hoc-signed predecessor - the cryptographic signature anchor changes, so existing TCC grants silently fail to match:

tccutil reset All com.jordanbaird.Ice
tccutil reset All com.jordanbaird.Ice.MenuBarItemService
osascript -e 'tell application "Ice" to quit'
open /Applications/Ice.app
# then re-grant Accessibility (and Screen Recording if used) in System Settings

All subsequent signed Fire updates preserve permissions automatically - no further reset is needed.

Fire ships with Sparkle 2 wired to a custom appcast at https://pdurlej.github.io/fire-releases/appcast.xml. After installing Fire, Check for Updates in the Fire menu discovers new signed releases.

The appcast is signed with EdDSA - the public key is embedded in the app's Info.plist (SUPublicEDKey), and the matching private key lives only in the maintainer's macOS Keychain. A network attacker who tampers with the GitHub Pages feed cannot inject a malicious update.

This fork keeps the upstream bundle ID com.jordanbaird.Ice, so it is a drop-in replacement for upstream Ice. Your existing Ice settings (~/Library/Preferences/com.jordanbaird.Ice.plist), hotkeys, and menu bar layout persist on upgrade.

The compatibility identity is intentional in 1.0: the user-visible product is Fire, while Ice.app, com.jordanbaird.Ice, existing Defaults keys, Keychain services, and XPC service names remain unchanged so preferences, TCC grants, layouts, and Sparkle continuity survive the update.

git clone https://github.com/pdurlej/fire-from-ice.git
cd fire-from-ice
xcodebuild -scheme Ice -configuration Release \
    CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO ONLY_ACTIVE_ARCH=NO

The resulting Ice.app is unsigned (ad-hoc) and will need tccutil reset on every rebuild on Tahoe. For signed local builds, the full sign + notarize + staple pipeline is in .github/workflows/build-dmg.yml.

Fire ships an embedded MCP server so you can ask a local AI assistant to manage your menu bar. Wire Claude Code, OpenCode, Cursor, or Codex to /Applications/Ice.app/Contents/MacOS/IceMCPBridge and 13 tools become available: direct layout tools, compatible automations, and Context Scenes (set_context, list_contexts, remove_context). Every write is consent-gated in Fire itself. See docs/mcp/CLIENT-SETUP.md for setup.

Ask your assistant for “when I work in Codex, show my quota in Fireline” or “when I open Mail, surface Fantastical”. Fire discovers exact identities, shows its own approval, and stores a tamper-evident grant. Contexts remain edge-triggered and never continuously fight manual menu bar changes; manage them in Fire → Settings → Contexts.

Fire ships with opt-in crash reporting via Sentry. Default: OFF - no data leaves your machine until you explicitly enable it in Advanced Settings → Privacy & Diagnostics.

When you opt in, Fire sends crash reports only - stack trace, thread state, macOS version, CPU architecture, and Fire version. That is what a maintainer needs to debug a crash and nothing more.

What is never sent, even when you opt in:

• Hostname or IP address
• Menu bar item contents (icons, titles, bundle IDs of running apps)
• Screenshots or view hierarchy
• Click/interaction breadcrumbs
• Network requests or fetched URLs
• Any usage analytics or telemetry

The Sentry SDK is only initialized at app launch if the toggle is on. When the toggle is off, no Sentry code runs, no data is collected, and no network connections are opened to Sentry's servers. You can flip it back off at any time; the change takes effect on the next app launch.

This is a Fire-fork-specific addition; upstream Ice has no crash reporting because it predates the maintainer's Apple Developer Program enrollment.

• Hide menu bar items
• "Always-hidden" menu bar section
• Show hidden menu bar items when hovering over the menu bar
• Show hidden menu bar items when an empty area in the menu bar is clicked
• Show hidden menu bar items by scrolling or swiping in the menu bar
• Automatically rehide menu bar items
• Hide application menus when they overlap with shown menu bar items
• Drag and drop interface to arrange individual menu bar items
• Display hidden menu bar items in a separate bar (e.g. for MacBooks with the notch)
• Search menu bar items
• Menu bar item spacing (BETA)

• Menu bar tint (solid and gradient)
• Menu bar shadow
• Menu bar border
• Custom menu bar shapes (rounded and/or split)

• Toggle individual menu bar sections
• Show the search panel
• Enable/disable the Ice Bar
• Show/hide section divider icons
• Toggle application menus

See ROADMAP.md for fork-specific planned features (profiles, layout import/export, sensible defaults for new-icon placement, per-display configuration). Trigger conditions shipped in fire.10 as AI-Native Automations.

• Bugs specific to this fork (not present in upstream Ice 0.11.12): file in this repo's Issues.
• Bugs present in upstream too: please file upstream first so they show in the canonical tracker. Cross-link from this repo if relevant.
• Pull requests: open against fire/main. Both lint.yml (SwiftLint, runs on every push touching **/*.swift) and build-dmg.yml (full signed+notarized build, runs on tag push v*) must stay green.

• Original Ice by Jordan Baird - every line of upstream code remains his copyright under GPL-3.0.
• Fire fork maintained by Piotr Durlej. Fork-specific changes are also GPL-3.0.
• The fork is independent and unofficial - please do not file fork-specific issues on the upstream tracker.

GPL-3.0 - unchanged from upstream.