The desktop app
ORBIS is a native macOS app that keeps running as a background companion when its window is closed. This page covers how the app behaves on your Mac.
Dock and menu-bar access
The installed ORBIS app retains its Dock icon as the dependable handle to a running app. Regular activation also leaves ORBIS in the app switcher and gives it a normal app menu. It creates a native ORBIS status item for the menu bar:
- Click the Dock icon → show the orb window.
- Left-click the icon → show the orb window.
- The icon's menu → Show ORBIS / Quit ORBIS.
The Dock and app-switcher presence is deliberate. ORBIS previously scheduled macOS's Accessory activation policy after creating the tray. In a macOS 26.5.2 reproduction, the status item appeared briefly during launch and was gone once the app loaded while the shell remained alive. Accessory is the implicated policy boundary, not yet a proven root cause. Staying in Regular/Dock mode removes that variable and preserves an independent path back to the running app even if the status item is absent or later hidden by macOS.
Installed and development builds
An installed ORBIS and tauri dev are separate shell and tray processes. Quit the copy you do not intend to use before diagnosing a missing icon because the extra item can crowd the menu bar and make the observation ambiguous. When a development tray is visible, its hover label says ORBIS (development); a release says ORBIS.
The Dock invariant applies to the installed .app. tauri dev uses a different macOS launch mode, so its Dock and tray behavior is diagnostic rather than a supported product guarantee.
Startup logs record a tray only after its native builder succeeds and Tauri can look up the process-local registration. The record includes the PID, development/release kind, bundle identifier, and executable path so simultaneous copies can be distinguished. ORBIS checks that registration again on a macOS Dock reopen and recreates the tray if the registration was removed. A registry lookup does not prove the icon is visually present: Tauri exposes no event for an item that macOS hides or fails to present. The Dock remains available in either case.
Closing vs. quitting
- Close the window (the red traffic-light, or ⌘W) → the window hides. ORBIS keeps running: the voice loop, your sidecar, and audio stay alive, so it keeps listening in the background. Bring it back from the Dock or menu-bar icon.
- Quit (⌘Q, Dock menu → Quit, or menu-bar orb → Quit ORBIS) → fully exits and shuts the sidecar down cleanly. This is the real "stop ORBIS."
The window
When it's visible, the orb fills the window edge-to-edge (an immersive title bar — the orb runs to the top). The chrome is minimal:
- Top-right gear → Settings.
- Reminders bell (below the gear) → your scheduled reminders; a dot, tinted to the orb's colour, appears when any are set.
- Double-click the orb → start a voice turn.
Under the hood
The app is a thin native shell plus a local sidecar (the brain + voice pipeline) that it launches and supervises. Everything runs on 127.0.0.1; nothing is exposed to the network. If something feels stuck, the cleanest reset is to fully Quit from the Dock or menu-bar orb and relaunch.
Installing
Download the signed, notarized .dmg from orbis.protolabs.studio/download and drag ORBIS into Applications — see Getting started.