CrawlBar is a native macOS menu bar app and CLI for operating local source crawlers. It discovers crawler manifests, shows status and freshness, runs supported actions, and keeps local configuration and redacted action logs in one place.
Install the notarized app and its crawlbar CLI with Homebrew:
brew install openclaw/tap/crawlbarCrawlBar requires macOS 14 or newer. You can also download the notarized universal build from GitHub Releases.
open "$(brew --prefix crawlbar)/CrawlBar.app"
crawlbar apps
crawlbar config validateThe app appears in the menu bar. Open its menu to inspect crawler state, refresh all sources, or open Settings for per-crawler actions and configuration.
CrawlBar ships manifests for GitHub, Slack, Discord, Telegram, iMessage, Apple Photos, WeChat, Notion, Google, WhatsApp, X, and Granola crawler tools. Each manifest describes the executable, supported actions, configuration fields, paths, and privacy metadata; the UI only exposes capabilities that the manifest provides.
Additional crawlers can install a manifest at ~/.crawlbar/apps/*.json without changing CrawlBar. The control protocol documents the manifest schema, status normalization, command contract, remote execution, and privacy rules.
Common crawler capabilities include status, refresh, doctor, search, and local archive actions. GitHub and Discord crawlers can also expose Cloudflare remote-archive status and compressed SQLite publish actions when their installed CLIs advertise those capabilities.
Google, WhatsApp, and X crawler commands can run locally or over SSH. Remote mode resolves the crawler binary on the configured host while keeping the same status and action model in CrawlBar.
The installed app includes a crawlbar CLI. SwiftPM names the development executable crawlbarctl so it does not collide with the CrawlBar app binary on case-insensitive filesystems.
| Task | Command |
|---|---|
| List discovered crawlers | crawlbar apps [--json] |
| Read normalized status | crawlbar status --app <id|all> [--json] |
| Run a crawler operation | crawlbar doctor|refresh --app <id> [--json] |
| Inspect or validate config | crawlbar config path|validate |
| Show all commands | crawlbar --help |
See the CLI reference for queries, actions, backups, configuration, development binary overrides, and JSON output.
CrawlBar stores its main configuration at ~/.crawlbar/config.json, external manifests under ~/.crawlbar/apps, and action logs under ~/.crawlbar/logs. Configuration and logs use private file permissions.
Crawler command output is redacted before it reaches the UI, CLI response, or action log. Source crawlers continue to own their archives, authentication, parsing, search, and source-specific privacy policy.
The package requires Swift 6.1 or newer.
swift build
swift run crawlbar-selftest
Scripts/package_app.sh
codesign --verify --deep --strict --verbose=2 dist/CrawlBar.appThe packaged app is written to dist/CrawlBar.app. See the development and packaging guide for signing and release-build details. Architecture and UI conventions live in the quality rubric and UI rules.
MIT. See LICENSE.