coder / coder/coder-desktop-macos

Add a way to open Coder Desktop when it's not visible in the menu bar

Open
#148 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
Swift
Stars
29
Forks
8
Avg merge
18h 14m
Merged PRs (30d)
4

Description

Currently if a user's menu bar is full of other apps, causing Coder Desktop to be hidden, then there is no way to open Coder Desktop without first closing other apps until it shows up.

Bellow are some potential ways to solve the problem:

**Open Coder Desktop's tray menu on focus**

I'm not sure if this is possible but if it is it would be a nice workaround to the issue. This was also the behavior I was hoping was already working when I ran into this issue.

**Open a standalone window**

There seems to be two ways to implement this behavior:

1. Make Coder Desktop a "real" app rather than a background app.
This solves the problem but causes Coder Desktop to always be in the dock even when no windows are open which could be seen as annoying.

2. Ship two apps, one background one "real".
This is probably the best solution in terms of UX but with having to build and maintain two separate apps in one.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No files or tests are named. Start by examining how Coder Desktop is configured as a macOS menu bar or background app and compare the proposed focus, standalone-window, and dual-app approaches. Done means users can open Coder Desktop when its menu bar item is hidden, with the resulting dock behavior matching the chosen UX.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
swift
Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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