A small Windows taskbar widget that shows Claude Code's live status: an animated icon while it is thinking or running a tool, rotating activity words, a yellow dot when it is awaiting your permission, and the elapsed time of the current turn. It docks into the empty space of the taskbar and resizes itself so it never overlaps the notification tray.
… ✦ Frolicking… 0m 43s | ^ 🖥 🔊 7:11 PM
Inspired by m1ckc3s/claude-status-bar (a macOS menu-bar app). This is a full rewrite to native C and Windows — though the hook idea and some pieces of the
state.jsoncontract were drawn from the original.
- Thinking — the icon animates with a rotating activity word and a live
1m 1stimer. - Running a tool — a label such as
Editing,Reading,Running command, orSearching. - Awaiting permission — a paused yellow dot.
- Idle / done — rests on the Claude mark.
The widget tracks the taskbar height and DPI, and anchors itself just before the tray, reflowing when tray icons appear or disappear.
Click the widget (either mouse button) to open its menu:
- Show timer — toggle the elapsed-time readout.
- Play Completion Sound — a chime when a turn finishes.
- Animation — Claude Spark, Claude Code, or Crab Walking.
- Show on — choose which monitors display the widget (defaults to the primary monitor).
- Quit — close the widget; it returns on your next Claude Code session.
- Download the latest
ClaudeStatusBar-win-x64.zipfrom Releases and extract it. - Double-click setup.bat. A small window opens, registers the hooks for the current user, prints a confirmation, and waits for a key press.
- Start a new Claude Code session — the widget appears whenever Claude Code is running, and hides itself when no session is active.
To remove it, run uninstall.bat (or the command under Uninstall), then delete the folder.
- Windows 10 or 11
- Claude Code (CLI)
- Node.js — runs the hooks
The release build bundles the .NET runtime, so no separate install is needed.
The Claude Code hooks write the current status to ~/.claude/statusbar/state.json; the widget
polls that file and renders the icon and label.
Claude Code -> hooks -> ~/.claude/statusbar/state.json -> widget (polls 0.4s)
SessionStart launches the widget and SessionEnd removes the session; the widget exits on its
own once no sessions remain (each active session is a file under ~/.claude/statusbar/sessions.d).
The widget is a borderless, top-most overlay. It locates the tray via
Shell_TrayWnd → TrayNotifyWnd and anchors itself just before it, re-asserting its z-order each
poll so it stays on top. One overlay window is created per selected monitor. No Explorer injection
or shell extensions are used.
Requires the .NET 9 SDK.
.\build.ps1 -SelfContained -Zip # -> dist\ClaudeStatusBar-win-x64.zip
.\build.ps1 -Install # build and register the hooks in one stepThe hook registration done by setup.bat runs hooks\install.js, which merges the hooks into
~/.claude/settings.json (backing it up once to settings.json.bak-statusbar and leaving other
hooks intact), copies the hook scripts to ~/.claude/statusbar, and records the executable path.
It is safe to run repeatedly.
Run uninstall.bat, or:
node "%USERPROFILE%\.claude\statusbar\uninstall.js"Removes the status-bar hooks and stops the running widget, leaving other hooks intact. Then delete the application folder.
Set CLAUDE_STATUSBAR_DEBUG=1 before starting a session to append hook activity to
~/.claude/statusbar/hooks.log.
Unofficial and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic. "Claude" and the Claude mark are trademarks of Anthropic, used nominatively. The MIT license covers the source code only.
Please don't contact Anthropic about this project. To report a bug, request a feature, or raise any other issue, open an issue at github.com/BankkRoll/claude-status-bar/issues.
MIT