Anyone working with continuous integration knows the familiar routine: push code, switch to the CircleCI dashboard, refresh repeatedly until the build completes. I’ve been evaluating Cistern over the past week as an alternative to this workflow, and it addresses the problem by monitoring CircleCI builds directly from your menu bar.
Cistern is a native Swift application that polls the CircleCI API and displays your current build status as a menu bar icon. The icon changes color based on build state, providing at-a-glance feedback without requiring browser tabs. When a build starts or completes, you receive a desktop notification with the build result. This works particularly well when coordinating deployments across distributed teams, where knowing exactly when a build finishes can help maintain momentum.
Setting up the app requires a CircleCI personal API token, which you generate through the CircleCI dashboard under User Settings. The token grants Cistern read-only access to your pipelines. One limitation of the CircleCI API itself is that it only provides pipeline data from the last seven days, so very old builds won’t appear in the app’s history.
The app runs efficiently with minimal system impact. In my usage, it maintains a small memory footprint while polling the API at regular intervals. The menu bar icon is subtle and adapts to both light and dark modes. When you click it, you see a list of recent builds with their status, branch names, and timing information.
Since Cistern is open source and available on GitHub under an MIT license, developers concerned about API token security can audit the source code before using it. The project is built with Swift and requires macOS 13.0 or later. Pre-compiled releases are available from the GitHub releases page, though they’re unsigned, so you’ll need to right-click and select Open on first launch.
For comparison, alternatives include checking CircleCI’s web interface directly, or setting up custom scripts with tools like BitBar. CircleCI also offers email notifications, but those create inbox noise rather than providing the immediate visual feedback of a menu bar utility.
The app requires Xcode 15.0 or later if you want to build from source, and the developer actively maintains the project with recent commits. For developers who work extensively with CircleCI and want real-time build monitoring without keeping browser tabs open, Cistern provides a focused solution. The latest release is version 1.3.0, released in early January 2026.
