Stackyard / User guide

User guide

Everything Stackyard does, section by section. It is a menu-bar app for Mac developers: it shows what is using your memory, CPU and disk, manages local servers, Docker containers and dev projects from one window, and frees disk space by removing caches your tools rebuild on their own. It needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later.

Getting started

Everything runs on your Mac. There is no account, no analytics and no tracking.

Install: Open Stackyard.dmg and drag Stackyard into Applications, then open it from there. Its icon appears in the menu bar.
The Welcome sheet: The first time you open the main window, a short sheet explains what Stackyard does and shows each permission with its status: Notifications for Guard alerts, Full Disk Access (optional, for Safari's cache and folders macOS protects) and Open at login. Help › Show Welcome… brings it back.
The menu bar: The menu-bar item shows how much memory is in use, with ⚠︎ when pressure is high. Its menu lists the heaviest apps with a Quit button each, local servers with a health dot, running projects with Stop, a button to quit all orphans, and Open Stackyard (⌘O).
The main window: Nine sections in the sidebar, ⌘1 to ⌘9. The badge at the bottom of the sidebar shows the build's status and opens the key sheet. Closing the window leaves Stackyard running in the menu bar.

Overview and Memory

Overview ⌘1: A memory ring with a plain-English summary (“Plenty of headroom”, “Memory is under pressure”), small CPU, GPU, network and disk charts, the heaviest apps, local servers and containers, reclaimable disk space and the top energy users. Show on a card jumps to its section.
Memory ⌘2: Used against total memory, with the current pressure. Each app's helper processes are grouped under it, so Chrome with 40 helpers is one row. Filter by High, Medium, Low or Orphans. Each row has Quit, Force Quit… (which asks first, because unsaved changes are lost) and Show in Finder.
Leaking and read-only rows: A Leaking badge marks an app whose memory keeps growing, when Guard is watching. Processes owned by other users or the system appear as one read-only row, System & other users.
Orphans: Dev processes such as node or python that kept running after the terminal, editor or AI agent that started them closed. Each shows who left it (Terminal, VS Code, Cursor, Claude Code, iTerm2, Warp, tmux…), its folder and its PID. Quit All clears them in one go.

Vitals

Vitals ⌘3: CPU in total and per core, GPU utilisation, network upload and download speed, disk activity and free space, battery health, cycle count and temperature, and the thermal state.
Top apps: Top apps by CPU with their energy impact, and Top energy, which answers “why is my fan on?”. Network by app shows which apps are using your connection right now, and only runs while that card is on screen.

Localhost

Localhost ⌘4: Every server listening on your Mac, with a health dot: green for an HTTP server answering normally, red for a server error (5xx) or no answer, blue for something that is not a web server, such as Postgres or Redis. Ports opened by Docker show the container's name. Show System Ports in the toolbar adds the ones macOS opens itself.
Actions: Open a server in the browser, Copy URL, Show in Finder for the process behind it, or Stop it.
Share on LAN: Opens a server that only listens on your Mac to other devices on your Wi-Fi, so you can try it on a phone, and shows a QR code to scan. It is shared on the original port plus 10000, so :3000 becomes :13000. Nothing is exposed to the internet. Sharing stops by itself if the server exits or your Mac changes network; share again on the new one.

Projects

Projects ⌘5: Add Folder… adds a folder where you keep code. Stackyard looks inside for package.json scripts such as dev and start (run with npm, pnpm, Yarn or Bun, depending on the lockfile), .claude/launch.json configs and run.sh files. Add Server… adds a command it did not find.
Start, stop, watch: Start or stop any project and watch its log as it runs. If the port a project needs is taken, Stackyard warns you before it starts. Projects started from Stackyard stop when you quit Stackyard.
Build & dependency folders: Each project's details list its rebuildable folders and their sizes: node_modules, .next, .nuxt, target, .venv, __pycache__, DerivedData, Pods, dist, build and others. Tick the ones you want gone and move them to the Trash; your tools recreate them on the next build. They cannot be removed while the project is running.
Stale projects: Turn on Stale to list projects whose source files have not changed in 30 days or more, each with how long it has been idle. These usually have the most to clean up.

Docker

Docker ⌘6: Containers grouped by Compose project, with CPU and memory use, ports, image, health and logs. Start, Stop and Restart each container, or Start All and Stop All for a project. If Docker is not running, Start Docker launches it.
Homebrew services: MySQL, Postgres, Redis and the other Homebrew services, each with an on/off switch.

Clean

Everything you clean goes to the Trash, not straight to deletion, so you can put it back. Stackyard never touches cookies, browser history, passwords, Xcode Archives or your projects.

Dev Caches: Xcode DerivedData, Device Support and simulators; npm, Yarn, pnpm and Bun; Gradle, CocoaPods, SwiftPM, Homebrew, pip, Go, Cargo, Playwright and Puppeteer; browser caches. Select All Safe picks everything that is safe to rebuild.
Large Files and Old Downloads: Your biggest files, sortable by size or name, and files in Downloads older than the number of days you choose.
Duplicates: Files over 1 MB with the same content — Stackyard compares contents, not names. The oldest copy in each set is kept and the others are pre-selected, so untick anything you want to keep.
Leftovers: Preferences, caches and support folders left behind by apps you have deleted. Check the list before removing, because some belong to command-line tools.
Startup: Launch agents and daemons — updaters, helpers and sync services that start on their own — with the app each belongs to, whether it is running, and whether it starts at login or restarts when quit. You can remove your own; the system folders are shown for reference. Open Login Items… opens the matching pane in System Settings.
Storage Map: Any folder, your home folder by default, drawn as tiles sized by the space each item takes. Click a tile to go into it and use the breadcrumb to go back up. Right-click for Open, Show in Finder or Move to Trash.
Uninstaller: Drop an app here, or choose one, to see what goes with it: support files, caches, preferences and login agents. If the app is running the button becomes Quit & Uninstall, and Force Quit & Uninstall handles an app that will not quit.
Permission prompts: The first time Stackyard scans Downloads, Desktop or Documents, macOS asks for your permission. That is normal.

History and Guard

History ⌘8: Memory is recorded every 30 seconds and the last 24 hours are kept. Charts for 1 h, 6 h and 24 h show total memory used and memory by app, with the peak and the heaviest app marked, plus possible leaks.
Memory pressure alerts: A notification when memory pressure stays high for 30 seconds.
Leak detection: Flags apps whose memory grows steadily, about 1 GB an hour or more over 45 minutes. A single jump does not count.
Quit orphans automatically: Quits orphan dev processes after 15 minutes, 30 minutes or an hour. Databases and background services such as Postgres, Redis, Ollama and nginx are left alone.
Quit when unused: Quits chosen apps when they have not been in front for a set number of minutes. Apps with unsaved documents ask first, and time asleep or locked does not count.
Meeting Mode: Quits the apps you choose so your Mac has room for a call, and reopens them when you end Meeting Mode.

Command palette and keyboard

Command palette ⌘K: Press ⌘K anywhere in Stackyard and type a few letters to quit any app, open or stop any local server, start or stop any project or container, clean any cache, or jump to any section.
Shortcuts: ⌘1 to ⌘9 go to a section, ↑ and ↓ move the selection, Space starts or stops the selected item, Return opens it, Esc closes, and ⌘, opens Settings.

Widgets, links and Settings

Widgets: Two widgets for the desktop and Notification Center: Memory (the pressure ring, and in the medium size the top three apps and free disk) and Local Servers (up to five ports with health dots). Right-click the desktop, choose Edit Widgets… and search for Stackyard. They update at most once a minute, and only when something changed.
Links: open "stackyard://memory" from Terminal, a script or another app opens that section. Any section name works — overview, memory, vitals, localhost, projects, docker, clean, history, guardTab — and stackyard://palette opens the command palette.
Settings ⌘,: Appearance (System, Light or Dark), Open at login, and Show Dock icon — turn it off to keep Stackyard in the menu bar only.

Privacy

Local by design: Health checks only talk to your own Mac (127.0.0.1). The only time Stackyard goes online is to check a licence key. No account, no analytics, no tracking.
Why it is not on the App Store: Stackyard is not sandboxed, because it needs to quit other apps and processes. That is why it is distributed as a signed download from this site rather than through the Mac App Store.

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