macOS · Apple Silicon + Intel
Switchboard gives your AI tools and your own eyes the local context macOS doesn't: services, ports, logs, resources, model runtimes, stale sessions, and safe controls — all local-first, no built-in AI assistant.
Open the downloaded .dmg, drag Switchboard into your
Applications folder, and open it. That's it.
Universal build for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, macOS 12 (Monterey) or later.
AI-dev command center
Before an agent acts on your Mac, Switchboard can tell it — and you — what is running, what is hot, what is stale, what owns each port, and what local stack it is about to touch.
One structured read covers current time and timezone, memory and CPU pressure, hot local AI runtimes, stale coding-agent sessions, port attention, and recent service failures. Agents can call it at session start and know what they're walking into.
Switchboard detects Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, MLX model servers, and coding-agent helpers like Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and VS Code — with ports, CPU/memory, and project path attached.
Connect Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Claude Desktop, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code, OpenCode, and others via a private local MCP server — agents get read-only environment context, service controls, port inspection, and workspace groups — all structured, audited, and bounded.
Services, ports, logs, runtimes, and agent sessions are grouped by project path into workspace stacks — so you and your agent both see what belongs to the same codebase right now, not just a flat process list.
Local context
Without Switchboard, AI clients start blind — no idea what time it is locally, what owns port 3000, whether a model runtime is already running, or whether a service from yesterday is still holding resources.
Agents always know the local date, time, and timezone — so log timestamps, cron schedules, and "run this now" make sense without guessing.
Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, and MLX servers are identified before an agent tries to spin up a duplicate — saving memory and avoiding port collisions.
Port attention items — blocked ports, drifted listeners, and duplicate dev servers — surface in the briefing so agents check before starting anything new.
CPU load, memory pressure, swap use, and battery state are included — so an agent knows whether the machine can handle another build or model inference before it tries.
Built to answer specific questions: which local service owns this process, why is it still alive, what owns this port, and what can I do next?
Switchboard auto-detects dev servers (port observation), Homebrew services, Docker containers, and launchd jobs — and tags them Discovered so you can tell them apart from services you set up by hand.
When Switchboard finds a dev server still listening on a port
you forgot about, the detail panel shows a Stop button right
there. Confirm, and it sends SIGTERM to the right
PID. No lsof, no kill -9 guessing.
The home screen surfaces new arrivals, port conflicts, and anything off-kilter first — with the same status vocabulary (running, degraded, stopped, unknown) across Homebrew, dev servers, launchd, and Docker. A Tools panel lets you switch on just the modules you use, so the app stays as light or as complete as your stack.
Every listening port, with the actual process and project name
attached — not just node 41327. Conflicts are
flagged where two things claim the same port.
Homebrew, Docker, HTTP, or any command you trust. Switchboard polls each one on its own cadence and shows you the rolling stopped / degraded / unknown breakdown — not a single misleading "100% errors" number.
Launchd plist StandardOutPath /
StandardErrorPath, Docker logs, command output,
service log files, command output, and Switchboard activity —
all merged into one live timeline with the optional Stream tool,
including arbitrary manual log files.
Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Docker Compose, Ollama, nginx, generic HTTP + command. Every preset's commands are reviewed and approved — no shell magic, no surprises.
Switchboard never executes a shell string from the UI. Every
action maps to an exact allowlisted cmd +
args. Destructive ones (delete, force-stop, install
from network) require an explicit per-command approval the first
time.
No background HTTP server. Your config and logs live under
~/Library/Application Support/ and never leave your
Mac. The one thing Switchboard sends is an anonymous
active-install count, with no account, installation token, or
raw IP stored. On by default; one toggle off in Settings →
Privacy.
See it in action
These are real Switchboard screens captured from a local demo fixture: discovered services, port sprawl, and live logs.
Where it fits
Activity Monitor says node. Switchboard says which
project, which agent session, which port, how long it has been
running, whether it is abnormal, and what safe action exists.
Catch the extra Vite, Next.js, FastAPI, or Rails servers that
walked from 5173 to 5174 to
5175.
See the local service behind the resource spike instead of
guessing from process names like node,
python, docker, or
ollama.
Recover the database, worker, tunnel, custom command, docs, and logs without reverse-engineering the setup again.
Inspect listeners, link them to services, reveal or stop the owning process, and adopt useful discoveries as monitor-only services.
Keep Ollama, LM Studio, OpenClaw, vector stores, model servers, API shims, dashboards, logs, and resource usage in one place.
Ask your AI assistant to create clean Switchboard entries for dev servers, Docker containers, Compose stacks, and Homebrew services with actions, links, logs, and resource hints.
Pricing
Switchboard stays useful for free. Switchboard Pro unlocks the AI-dev command center mode: MCP integration, resource pressure monitoring, live log streaming, and system log triage — one-time purchase, lifetime license, no subscription.
No account. No key. Forever.
Keep your own services visible and under control.
≈ 146.25 SAR · one-time · lifetime license · up to 3 Macs
AI-dev command center mode. No subscription, ever. Includes all Switchboard 1.x updates and support for at least 2 years.
A Switchboard Pro license is $39, charged in SAR through Paylink — one-time, no subscription. Got a promo code? Enter it at checkout to get the discount.
Activation uses a license key only. New installs include a 7-day full-feature trial, then return to Free.
Licensed Macs keep working offline for up to 30 days. If access lapses, Switchboard simply returns to Free.
Why this exists
A dev server here, a database there, a tunnel for some experiment
— half of them still running days later, none of them stopped, all
of them quietly using CPU and battery I didn't have to spare.
macOS doesn't tell you about this. Activity Monitor will list the
processes if you go looking, but it won't connect
node to the dev server I started last week.
The problem got worse when I started building with AI coding tools — Cursor, Claude Code, VS Code, the whole crowd. They're great at spinning up dev servers; they're not always great at stopping the previous one before starting the next. Sometimes the agent is smart enough to free the port it needs — sometimes it just walks to the next available one. After a few hours of iteration you can end up with six copies of the same Vite server competing for memory, the laptop running hot, the battery draining fast, and nothing in macOS surfacing any of it.
You know roughly what you run — you just lose track of what's still running. The fan spins up, the battery drops, and nothing in macOS connects it back to that dev server, worker, or model you started days ago and forgot about.
Switchboard is the thing I wanted: one place where every local service shows up, every forgotten process gets surfaced, every port flood gets named with its actual cause, and every AI tool I use can read the local context before it acts. The OS won't tell you. The AI tools won't ask. This will.
Switchboard is built by Abdullah Alzuwayed, an independent developer. I keep it local-first because it is the tool I wanted on my own Mac. You can verify the builder on LinkedIn.
Switchboard is designed to be useful without becoming a shell-in-a-webview — and without giving AI clients raw shell access to your Mac.
serviceId,
action, and explicit confirmation state.
cmd +
args definitions.
tokio::process::Command, never
sh -c.
Yes — Switchboard stays useful for free: manage unlimited services (start/stop/restart/update with approval review), use the complete Activity, Docs, Observer, Ports, and Maintenance tools, and get service-down plus new-arrival notifications. No account, no card, no ads. New installs get a 7-day full-feature trial, then return to free use.
A Switchboard Pro license is a one-time $39 purchase (with promo codes from time to time) — a lifetime license, not a subscription. It unlocks the paid tools — Stream, System Logs, Resources, and MCP — activates up to 3 Macs, and includes all Switchboard 1.x updates and support for at least 2 years. See pricing.
A Switchboard Pro license activates up to 3 Macs at once. There's no account — activation is just your license key plus the Mac it runs on.
If you still have the Mac, free its slot from the app: Settings → License & Access → Deactivate. Then activate on the new Mac.
If you can't get to that Mac, use the Reset my devices page — enter your email and order number and it frees all your slots so you can re-activate on the Mac you're using now.
Deactivate on the old Mac (Settings → License & Access → Deactivate), or use Reset my devices if you can't reach it, then enter your key on the new Mac. Lost the key? Recover it here.
For licensing, billing, or general questions, use the Contact page — we reply by email. For bug reports, open an issue on GitHub Issues so the build version and steps stay together.
Switchboard is built first for developer-ish workflows: projects, local databases, dev servers, containers, local AI tools, and ports. You do not need to be a command-line expert, but it helps if you are trying to understand what your machine is running.
Installing is just drag-to-Applications and open — no Terminal steps, since the app is notarized. Past that you drive Switchboard from its interface, but getting real value out of it assumes you're comfortable with the services, commands, and ports you run on your machine.
Yes on two levels. First, Switchboard is agnostic about what started a process — it watches ports and processes directly, so when your AI coding tool spawns a Vite dev server (or a FastAPI server, or anything else listening locally), Switchboard auto-detects it, tags it Discovered, and gives you a Stop button with confirmation. Doesn't matter which agent or which editor started it.
Second, with Switchboard Pro, those same AI tools can connect to Switchboard via MCP. Supported clients include Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Codex, Claude Desktop, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code, OpenCode, and any MCP-compatible harness. They get an environment briefing, service inspection and control, port details, AI runtime inventory, workspace groupings, and structured service creation — all through a private local socket, never a network port.
Switchboard isn't a port pre-assignment tool. Port managers and named-URL routers help an agent pick a free port before it starts a server; killing a port is a one-off. Switchboard gives you the standing, machine-wide picture — what's running, what's draining battery and CPU, what owns each port — plus a safe stop / restart flow, including the long-running local AI tools (Ollama, LM Studio, self-hosted agents) that pile up between sessions. Use them together: coordination decides where things start, Switchboard shows you everything that ends up running.
No account, ever. Download the .dmg, drag
Switchboard.app into /Applications,
and launch it — free use needs nothing to sign up for.
If you buy the Switchboard Pro license, activation is by license key only (no account): paste the key into Settings → License & Access. One license activates up to 3 Macs.
One thing, and it is anonymous: an active-install count sent via the daily update check so we can see roughly how many people use Switchboard. No account, no identifiers, no installation token, no raw IP stored — and no crash reporter or per-action tracking. The app does not listen on any network port.
Everything else stays on your Mac under
~/Library/Application
Support/com.azzuwayed.switchboard/. Turn the stats off with one toggle in Settings → Privacy
(updates keep working), or disable update checks entirely.
Yes. Direct Switchboard releases are universal macOS builds for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.
macOS 12 (Monterey) or newer on Apple Silicon or Intel Macs.
The app checks the public updates manifest once a day and shows a non-intrusive banner in the app shell when a new release is available. The in-app flow downloads the update, installs it, and then asks you to restart — the new bundle's minisign signature is verified against the public key compiled into the running app before it swaps.
Prefer to install manually? Disable
Check for updates automatically in Settings and grab
the .dmg from the
releases page
on your own schedule.
Quit Switchboard from the menu bar, drag
Switchboard.app to the Trash, and — if you also
want to delete your services configuration — remove
~/Library/Application
Support/com.azzuwayed.switchboard/. No system-wide installer to undo.
No. Switchboard is proprietary software, and the source repository is not planned to be public.
Open an issue on GitHub Issues. Include the build version (Switchboard → About) and a short reproduction when you can.