> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://meridiona-mintlify-5f11afa6.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Use the Meridian Menu Bar Tray App

> Check daemon health, see your top app for the day, and trigger a worklog draft from the macOS menu bar — without opening the dashboard.

Meridian ships with a lightweight macOS menu bar tray app that lives in your system tray and gives you an at-a-glance view of whether the background daemons are healthy and what you've been working on today. It's designed for the times you don't want to context-switch to the full dashboard — a quick glance at the menu bar is enough to confirm Meridian is recording and to spot when something has stopped working.

<Note>
  The tray app is **macOS only**. The Linux and Windows builds of Meridian do not include it.
</Note>

## What the tray shows

The tray icon reflects daemon health in real time. Open the popover to see:

* **Daemon status** — whether the Rust ETL daemon is running, derived from the `daemon_running` field on `/api/health` (a launchd probe with a 3-second timeout).
* **Accessibility helper status** — whether the a11y helper is currently trusted by macOS. An untrusted helper means window titles aren't being captured.
* **Today's top app** — the app you've spent the most focused time in so far today, with elapsed time.
* **Pending worklog drafts** — a count of drafts waiting on your review.

From the popover you can also:

* Open the full dashboard at `http://localhost:3000`.
* Trigger a worklog draft for today without leaving the menu bar.
* Pause or resume the daemon.

The tray polls `/api/health` and the activity endpoints every 60 seconds. When the daemon goes down — or comes back online — you get a macOS notification so you don't silently lose recording time.

## Installation and auto-start

The tray app is installed automatically by `./install.sh` and `meridian update`. It's registered as a LaunchAgent (`com.meridiona.tray`) so it starts on login alongside the rest of the stack — there's no separate command to run.

You can verify it's loaded with:

```bash theme={null}
launchctl list | grep com.meridiona.tray
```

If you want to start, stop, or restart the tray independently of the other daemons:

```bash theme={null}
# Stop the tray
launchctl stop com.meridiona.tray

# Start it again
launchctl start com.meridiona.tray
```

Logs are written to `~/.meridian/logs/tray.log` and `~/.meridian/logs/tray-error.log`.

## When to use it

Reach for the tray when you want to:

* Confirm Meridian is still recording without breaking flow to open a browser.
* Get notified the moment the daemon stops (for example after a system update or permission revocation).
* Kick off a worklog draft quickly at the end of the day or after a focused session.

For deeper analysis — timelines, per-session detail, the apps view — open the dashboard. The tray is intentionally minimal.

## Troubleshooting

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="The tray icon doesn't appear in the menu bar">
    Check that the LaunchAgent is registered and running:

    ```bash theme={null}
    launchctl list | grep com.meridiona.tray
    ```

    If it's missing, re-run the installer or reinstall just the tray daemon:

    ```bash theme={null}
    bash scripts/install-tray-daemon.sh
    ```

    Then tail the log to confirm it started:

    ```bash theme={null}
    tail -f ~/.meridian/logs/tray.log
    ```
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="The popover shows 'daemon stopped' but meridian status looks fine">
    The tray reads `daemon_running` from `/api/health`, which probes launchd for `com.meridiona.daemon`. If the UI service is down or unreachable on `http://localhost:3000`, the tray can't fetch health and falls back to a stopped state. Confirm the UI is up:

    ```bash theme={null}
    meridian status
    curl -s http://localhost:3000/api/health
    ```

    Restart the stack with `meridian restart` if the UI service isn't running.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Health status isn't refreshing">
    The tray polls every 60 seconds. If the popover shows stale numbers for longer than that, check the tray log for errors and confirm the dashboard is reachable:

    ```bash theme={null}
    tail -f ~/.meridian/logs/tray.log
    curl -s http://localhost:3000/api/health | jq
    ```
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>