ORBIS

Appearance

Use ORBIS from the Dock or menu bar ​

ORBIS stays running as a background companion when you close its window. This guide covers how to find, show, and fully quit it.

Find it ​

The installed ORBIS app stays in the Dock as its dependable way back to the app. Regular activation also leaves ORBIS in the app switcher and gives it a normal app menu. It creates an ORBIS orb in the macOS menu bar (top-right of the screen) when macOS presents the native status item.

The Dock and app-switcher presence is intentional. In a macOS 26.5.2 reproduction, the Tauri status item appeared briefly during launch and was gone after the app loaded while the shell kept running. The Accessory-policy transition was the implicated boundary, so ORBIS now retains the independent Regular/Dock path while the underlying tray behavior is investigated.

If an installed and a development copy are both running, quit the one you do not intend to use before diagnosing the menu bar. A visible development tray has the tooltip ORBIS (development); the logs also record each process's PID and executable path. A crowded or notched menu bar can hide status items even when both processes are healthy.

The dependable Dock behavior above describes the installed .app; tauri dev is a different macOS launch mode and should be treated as diagnostic only.

Show the window ​

Click the Dock icon, or left-click the menu-bar orb when it is visible, to bring the ORBIS window forward.

Hide it (keep it running) ​

Close the window — the red traffic-light button, or ⌘W. The window disappears but ORBIS keeps running and listening. You can still talk to it and it'll respond; only the orb visual is hidden. Click the Dock icon or the menu-bar orb to bring it back.

Quit it (stop it completely) ​

Use the menu-bar orb → Quit ORBIS, ⌘Q, or the Dock menu's Quit. This fully exits and shuts down the voice pipeline. Closing the window alone does not stop ORBIS.

Why it works this way ​

A voice companion should be available, not a window you keep re-opening. Closing-to-hide keeps it running in the background; the retained Dock icon ensures there is still a visible way back when the menu-bar item is not visible. For the full behaviour, see The desktop app.