Install on macOS

Download the disk image, drag BrewPing into Applications, and start it from the menu bar.

macOS

Before you start

macOS 13.0 Ventura or later (enforced by LSMinimumSystemVersion).
At least one CLI coding agent installed: OpenCode, Claude Code, Codex CLI or pi.
Your iPhone or Android phone on the same Wi-Fi network as the Mac.

Install steps

Download the disk image

Grab BrewPing-1.0.0.dmg (Universal 2, works on Apple silicon and Intel). Intel users who want a smaller download can use BrewPing-1.0.0-Intel.dmg instead.

Open the image

Double-click the .dmg file to mount it.

Drag to Applications

Drag the BrewPing icon into the Applications folder shown in the window.

Launch it

Open Launchpad or Applications and double-click BrewPing. On first launch macOS may warn that it was downloaded from the internet — Control-click and choose Open if that happens.

First run

1A cup icon (cup.and.saucer.fill) appears in the menu bar. BrewPing keeps running there.
2The main window opens at its default size of 1080 x 720.
3macOS asks for Local Network permission. Tap Allow — without it your phone cannot reach this Mac, and discovery will not work.
4The HTTP service starts automatically and listens on port 8787. If 8787 is taken, it tries 8788 then 8789.
5Bonjour starts advertising the service type _brewping._tcp. so phones on the same network can find this Mac.

Closing the window does not quit the app

BrewPing is a menu bar app. Closing the main window leaves the service running in the background, which is what you want — your phone can still reach it. To fully stop it, use the Quit BrewPing item in the menu bar.

Verify it is running

The menu bar panel shows the device name, LAN IP, port and service status at a glance. From Terminal you can confirm with the CLI:

bash

# Print Status / PID / Session / HTTP
brewping status

# Exit code 0 means a session is running; non-zero means it is not.

Ports used

Port	Purpose	Fallback
8787	HTTP API for phones and CLI	8788, then 8789
—	Unix socket ~/.brewping/agent.sock	none

Building from source

Requires Swift 5.9 toolchain. The build script produces build/BrewPing Desktop.app and refuses to run if logo/AppIcon.icns is missing.

bash

# Defaults: APP_VERSION=1.0.0  SHOW_IN_DOCK=1  BUILD_ARCH=arm64
# BUILD_ARCH accepts: arm64 | x86_64 | universal
./build-app.sh

# Universal 2 builds twice and merges the binaries with lipo.
BUILD_ARCH=universal ./build-app.sh

# Generate the icon first if it is missing:
python3 tools/make-appicon.py

Do not build the app target directly with swift build --target BrewPingDesktop — the script's packaging steps (icon copy, Info.plist keys, lipo) would be skipped. Always use build-app.sh.

Uninstall

1Quit BrewPing from the menu bar.
2Delete BrewPing from Applications.
3Optionally remove the data directory: rm -rf ~/.brewping (this deletes pairing tokens, sessions, conversations and logs).

What is BrewPing

Install on Windows