Changelog

The first public release. Berth is a native dock for the Mac: it takes the place of Apple’s Dock or sits beside it, with profiles, widgets and readouts around the notch.

Profiles

• Build as many docks as you like, each a named profile with its own apps, files, folders, links, Shortcuts, stacks, widgets, look and behaviour. Switch between them from the menu bar, which can show the active profile’s name. Rename, duplicate, reorder, export and import them; an exported profile never carries your Codex or Claude connection.
• Start from a layout: Minimal, Developer or Meetings creates a new profile in one click, skips apps you don’t have and asks for no permission. Developer and Meetings also turn on matching notch readouts.
• A profile can use Apple’s Dock instead of a Berth dock: capture Apple’s Dock into it, and switching to that profile puts those apps back in Apple’s Dock, which restarts to apply them. Before Berth first changes Apple’s Dock it saves an untouched backup, and Restore original Dock returns to it.

The dock

• Place the dock at the bottom, left or right edge of the screen, in the space Apple’s Dock normally takes, or float it where you like, on the display you choose.
• Icons can be 32 to 128 pt, spaced as tightly as Apple’s Dock or further apart, on System glass (Liquid Glass on macOS 26 and later), Clear glass, Frosted or Solid, with your choice of tint, opacity and corners. New profiles start from Apple’s Dock’s own icon size, magnification, screen edge and auto-hide, and Match Apple’s Dock copies them again at any time.
• Magnification works like Apple’s: the icon under the pointer grows to the size you set, its neighbours follow the same smooth wave, and magnified icons rise out of the glass while the shelf keeps its size. The wave carries across dividers and spacers, and settles while the pointer is over a widget card, so the card stays still to read.
• Hover over an icon to see its name above it (beside it on a side dock), or show labels all the time. The soft highlight behind the icon under the pointer can be turned off.
• Launching an app bounces its icon until the app has finished opening, as in Apple’s Dock; an app that is already running doesn’t bounce. Apps that open grow into the dock, and apps that quit shrink away.
• Show running apps (on by default) adds apps that are open but not in the profile after a separator, in launch order. Drag one into your kept apps to keep it at that spot.
• The gear at the end of the dock opens Settings and takes dropped items. The lock below it locks the layout, so nothing is dragged into, out of or around the dock by accident; launching apps and dropping files on them still work.
• The dock can auto-hide and reveal from the screen edge, and General → Show / hide dock gives it a keyboard shortcut. Reveal and hide delays, keeping Berth above other windows, and clicking the active app’s icon to hide it are among the advanced options.

Items, stacks and folders

• One Add to Dock menu adds apps (from a searchable list of installed apps), files, folders, web links, Shortcuts, stacks, widgets, AirDrop, the Trash, spacers and dividers, or drop apps, files, folders and links onto the gear. Any item can have its own name, custom icon and colour tag.
• Custom stacks keep apps, files, folders, links and Shortcuts under one named tile with a four-icon preview. Drop a tile onto a stack to add it, and click the stack for a grid sorted by name or in your own order.
• A folder can open as a popover list or grid that you can filter and sort by name, date modified or date added. Downloads, Desktop and Documents are one click away in Add to Dock, and Downloads opens newest first, like Apple’s Downloads stack.
• Drop files onto an app to open them with it, onto AirDrop to share them, or onto the Trash to move them there. Drag a tile onto the Trash to remove the tile; click the Trash to open it, or choose Empty Trash… from its menu, which asks first.

Menus

• Right-click or Control-click any tile for its menu, which opens as a popover pointing at the tile, as in Apple’s Dock, and works with the arrow keys, Return and Escape.
• App menus start with the app’s recent documents, such as Xcode’s recent projects or Preview’s PDFs, and offer Show All Windows, Hide and Quit for a running app (Force Quit while you hold Option). Safari, Terminal and Ghostty also offer New Window, Finder New Finder Window, and Mail and Messages New Message.

Editing the dock

• Edit mode tidies the dock in place: choose Edit dock from the gear’s menu, or press and hold an icon. Tiles wobble and show a remove badge, and Done, Escape or a click outside ends it.
• Drag an item along the dock to move it. Only the icon follows the pointer, and its place stays open as a gap until you let go.
• Drag an item clearly off the dock and hold it there for half a second to remove it, as in Apple’s Dock: a Remove label appears, and letting go removes it. Escape, or coming back over the dock, keeps it, and nothing is ever dropped on the desktop.

Apple’s Dock

• Berth can auto-hide Apple’s Dock while a profile is active (new profiles do), and Keep it hidden completely stops Apple’s Dock appearing at the edge Berth uses. Press ⌘⌥D to show Apple’s Dock for the moment.
• Prefer Apple’s Dock within reach? With Keep it hidden completely off, Move and auto-hide Apple’s Dock moves it to another edge whenever both docks would share one.
• Every change Berth makes to Apple’s Dock is temporary: it is undone when you quit, switch to a profile without it or turn the option off. After a Force Quit or a crash Berth repairs it at the next launch and leaves alone anything you changed yourself in between. A very long auto-hide delay left behind by another dock tool is removed rather than kept as your setting, and Berth tells you once when it finds one.

Full screen, Spaces and displays

• The dock hides over full-screen apps and comes back as macOS finishes leaving full screen. It doesn’t flash when you switch between two full-screen apps; locking and unlocking keeps it hidden over a full-screen app, and after a wake or a login Berth checks again so it doesn’t stay over one.
• Full-screen apps are recognized on a MacBook’s notched display too, including apps that keep the menu bar showing. On that display used alone, a desktop whose only window is one app’s zoomed window also counts as full screen, so the dock hides there.
• When the Mac or its displays sleep, or you switch to another user, the dock steps aside and comes back on the right display. Connecting or disconnecting a display, closing the lid or changing resolution moves it once, cleanly, and it returns to its own display when that reconnects.

Widgets

• Twelve widgets sit beside your apps as compact readout cards: Clock, Calendar, Reminders, Battery, System (CPU and memory), Weather, Focus timer, Now Playing, Network, Quick note, Codex usage and Claude usage.
• Every card reads the same way: a glyph, ring or artwork, one large value and one grey line. A card is only as wide as its content and never changes width as the value changes, and neighbouring widgets can share one card with a thin separator.
• Customize each widget’s Style (Full, Compact or Number only) and Accent (its own colour or one of eight system colours). For the whole dock, choose the card background (Glass, a faint region of the shelf; Inset; or None) and Colour or Monochrome, where a warning shows an exclamation mark instead of a colour. Increase Contrast and Reduce Transparency always draw a solid, outlined card.
• Clicking a card does the obvious thing: Clock opens Calendar, Reminders and Weather open their apps, and Calendar joins a meeting that is about to start or under way. Right-click for the widget’s own commands, such as Change location… for Weather.
• Weather shows the temperature and conditions for any city or place you type, in your region’s unit, without asking for your location.
• Network shows live upload and download speeds over Wi-Fi and Ethernet, without counting VPN traffic twice. System shows CPU and memory use, and Battery the charge and whether it is charging.
• Reminders shows how many reminders are due today and the next one’s title. Quick note keeps a note on the dock and edits it in a small window. Focus timer runs a 5, 15, 25 or 50 minute session and can notify you when it ends.
• Now Playing shows and controls Music, Spotify, Swinsian, VLC and QuickTime Player, with previous, play/pause and next buttons on the card (play/pause only for QuickTime Player) and artwork from Music and Spotify. Browser players are not supported: macOS has no public way to read them.

Meetings

• Calendar shows your next timed meeting and counts down from fifteen minutes. When the event has a Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex, FaceTime or other meeting link, Join opens it.
• Meeting reminders, if you want them, arrive 1 to 15 minutes before with Join and Snooze 2 min, and follow meetings that move or are cancelled.

Codex and Claude usage

• Codex usage and Claude usage show how much of your subscription allowance is left: a ring with a large percentage, and when the most limited window resets. The ring turns amber when the allowance runs low and fades, marked Stale, when the reading is old. These are subscription allowances, not API billing.
• Codex usage runs your installed Codex CLI briefly with its own login, without reading its credentials. Berth finds the CLI for you and reads it only while a readout is visible: every 15 minutes, every 5, 30 or 60, or only when you ask.
• Claude usage follows Claude Code through a small status-line bridge that keeps only the allowance figures, never your credentials or conversations. Set up Claude installs it (Python 3 is needed), backs up your Claude Code settings and keeps every other preference; Manual setup covers a custom configuration. From then on readings arrive by themselves.
• Each provider has one connection for the whole app, shared by every card and the notch. Usage details… lists every window with its reset time.
• Alert below sends one notification when a provider’s allowance drops to the level you choose (10 to 50 % left), and one more when it is back, using only the readings Berth already makes.

The notch

• On a MacBook with a notch, readouts sit either side of the camera housing on a black surface that blends into the bezel: CPU, memory, battery, Codex, Claude Code, Codex and Claude together, Now Playing or Next Meeting. Turn it on in Settings → Notch. On a display without a notch, the readouts can sit in a small capsule at the top centre instead.
• Click the notch or either readout to unfold a small dashboard below it, with CPU, memory and battery gauges and a card for each readout, on dark Liquid Glass on macOS 26 and later. Escape, ⌘W or a click outside folds it away.
• The unfolded cards show every Codex and Claude window, the next meeting with Join, and Now Playing with previous, play/pause and next. With advanced options on, choose the sections and their order, including a Battery section with the time left or to full, the last six hours of charge, cycle count, health, power in watts and the apps that used the most energy.
• On a Mac with a battery, Battery on the notch edge draws a thin line all the way round the notch in the charge’s colour: green, amber at 20 % and below, red at 10 % and below. It is bright up to the charge and glows softly into a dimmer line beyond, so the outline reads as a gauge.
• The battery edge moves with care: it draws itself in when it appears, the level springs to each new value, the colour cross-fades at 20 % and 10 %, a highlight travels up to the charge while charging, one slow sweep runs round the outline when it reaches full, and a low battery breathes gently. With Reduce Motion the level simply changes, and a steady battery that isn’t charging never moves.
• Over a full-screen app the notch readout hides. With Show in fullscreen on it stays: the readouts fade to a quiet grey and the battery edge steps aside until you point at the notch or unfold it.

Settings and first run

• A short welcome on the first launch: pick a starter layout with your real dock as the preview, a screen edge and what happens to Apple’s Dock. Then the dock arrives, drawing itself as a line of light while the icons fly in. About replays both.
• Settings look like System Settings: General, Notifications, Notch and About for the whole Mac, and Items, Layout & Look, Behavior and Switching for the selected profile. Show advanced options reveals the rarely used controls.
• About shows the version, Check for Updates…, your license, the end-user license and the acknowledgements of the components Berth is built with.
• Launch Berth at login, show its icon in Apple’s Dock if you like, and close Settings with ⌘W while Berth keeps running in the menu bar.
• Berth follows Reduce Motion, Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast throughout, and its readouts are labelled for VoiceOver.
• Berth’s icon shows the product: a screen with the notch, its status dot and the dock along the bottom. The one mark is the app icon, the menu bar icon, the header of Settings, About and the welcome, and the installer’s volume icon.

Switching

• Give each profile a keyboard shortcut, set one to cycle through them, or turn on a two-finger horizontal swipe over the dock.
• Display rules switch profiles when a monitor connects or disconnects, with a fallback for when no rule matches.
• Focus switching changes profile with your Focus, on a best-effort basis. For a dependable route, Set up Shortcuts… copies a profile’s activation link and opens Shortcuts, so one shortcut can set your Focus and switch Berth together.

Backups and recovery

• Back up all settings… saves every profile, setting, custom icon and keyboard shortcut in one file. Restore backup… shows the profiles it holds, keeps a recovery copy first, and by default leaves out display and Focus rules so a backup also suits another Mac.
• Before a new version of Berth first changes your profiles and settings, it copies them aside and keeps the five newest copies.
• A damaged profile or settings file never stops Berth from starting: it keeps what it can read, tells you which file is affected and leaves that file untouched. A profile saved by a newer Berth opens with a notice and is not changed.
• Remove Berth… in About lists each step before it runs: put Apple’s Dock back, remove the login item, optionally move Berth’s data to the Trash, then quit.

Trial and license

• Every feature works for 7 days from the first launch, with no account, no registration and no card. Afterwards the dock keeps working as it is and every setting can still be changed; only adding items or profiles asks for a license, and nothing is deleted.
• A lifetime license is one line of text you paste into About → License. It is checked on your Mac against a key built into Berth, so it never needs a license server and keeps working offline.
• A refunded license stops working from the next update on: each version of Berth carries the list of refunded licenses, so the check still never leaves your Mac.

Support

• Report a problem…, in About and in the menu bar menu, shows the whole report first, then opens an email to support@byallmeans.work for you to read and send yourself, or copies the text. It carries the Berth and macOS versions, the Mac model, the widgets and readouts in use and which permissions are allowed, and never file names, paths, event titles, profile names or account data.
• One checkbox adds the newest Berth crash report, which you can read first. About → How support works sets out response times and refunds.

Privacy

• Public macOS APIs only: Berth never asks for Screen Recording or Accessibility. Calendars, Reminders, Automation and Notifications are asked for only when you turn on a feature that needs them.
• No account, no telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporter and no cloud sync. Only the features you turn on use the network (Weather, Spotify artwork, your Codex CLI), and Berth looks for updates only when you choose Check for Updates… in About.

Performance

• Widgets and readouts stop working whenever they can’t be seen, and the dock, its widgets and the notch share one CPU and memory sampler and one battery listener, so Berth idles near 0 % CPU.

Requirements

• macOS 13 Ventura or later, on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. Liquid Glass needs macOS 26 or later; earlier versions use a frosted material.