Install

There are three ways in. The one line installer sets up the CLI and the app together and is the one most people want. The DMG gives you only the app. Building from source is for contributors.

Check the requirements first: macOS 14 or later on Apple Silicon, Homebrew and the Xcode Command Line Tools, about 5 GB of free disk.

The one line installer

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/askysh/benchbar/main/install.sh | bash

The installer checks macOS, the Command Line Tools and Homebrew, clones the CLI into ~/.local/share/benchbar with links in ~/.local/bin, adds that folder to ~/.zshrc, and installs the BenchBar app from the latest release into ~/Applications after checking its sha256. It then offers benchbar adopt for a bench it finds, or benchbar install. It never runs sudo.

In more detail, in this order, and it says so before each step:

It checks macOS and Apple Silicon (it warns on Intel), the Xcode Command Line Tools (it offers xcode-select --install and waits) and Homebrew (it offers the official installer).
It clones the CLI into ~/.local/share/benchbar, or pulls when the clone exists, links benchbar and frappe-mac into ~/.local/bin, and adds that folder to PATH in ~/.zshrc inside a # >>> benchbar-path >>> marker block.
It installs or updates the BenchBar app from the latest GitHub release: the zip is checked against the release’s SHA256SUMS and unpacked into ~/Applications. This step is skipped when no release exists yet.
It offers benchbar adopt for a bench it finds, or benchbar install.

The only step that may ask for your password is Homebrew’s own installer, and it says so first. Prompts read from the terminal, so the installer works when piped from curl.

Installer flags

Pass flags after bash -s --, for example curl -fsSL .../install.sh | bash -s -- --no-app.

Flag	What it does
`--yes`	Accept every default, no questions (no terminal needed)
`--dry-run`	Print the plan and every command, change nothing
`--no-app`	The CLI only
`--app-only`	The app only
`--version vX.Y.Z`	Install that release of the app instead of the latest
`--uninstall`	Remove the app, the links and the PATH block; see Uninstall

The app from the DMG

Download BenchBar-<version>.dmg from the releases page, open it and drag BenchBar to Applications. The app is not yet signed with an Apple Developer ID, so macOS 15 and later stop the first launch:

Double click BenchBar. A dialog says “BenchBar” Not Opened: Apple could not verify it is free of malware. Click Done. The highlighted button is Move to Trash (Move to Bin in British English), so do not press Return.
Open System Settings > Privacy & Security, scroll to the Security section: “BenchBar was blocked to protect your Mac”.
Click Open Anyway, confirm with your password or Touch ID, then Open Anyway once more.

This happens once. The one line installer avoids it, because curl sets no quarantine flag on the download. Verify a download with shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS from the same release.

The app needs the CLI. Install it with the one line installer and --no-app, or from source below.

From source

git clone https://github.com/askysh/benchbar.git && cd benchbar
./benchbar install                 # the CLI needs nothing else
brew install xcodegen
scripts/release-local.sh           # the app: dist/BenchBar-<version>.zip and .dmg
scripts/macos-install-local.sh     # or build it and copy it to ~/Applications

The app needs full Xcode 26 or newer.

After installing

Open a new Terminal tab, or run source ~/.zshrc, so benchbar and the bench* helpers are on your PATH. Then follow the Quick start.

Uninstall

benchbar uninstall-service     # remove the agent, runner, Procfile.lean and helpers; keep the bench
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/askysh/benchbar/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --uninstall

The second line removes the app, the links and the PATH block, and offers to remove the agents and the checkout (with --yes: yes to both). Benches, sites and databases are never deleted by benchbar; the recipe for wiping one by hand is in Troubleshooting.