Menu bar and tray

Abliteration is designed to keep running quietly in the background even when its main window is closed, so that the local hardware bridge stays available to the abliteration.org website and so you can bring the app back with a single click. On macOS this is done through a menu bar icon in the top-right of your screen; on Windows it’s a system tray icon next to the clock. Both give you the same core actions, and both keep the app alive while you use other things on your computer.

This page focuses on the macOS menu bar, which was added in a recent build. The Windows tray is briefly summarised at the end.

Where to find it

Look at the top-right of your Mac’s screen, in the row where the battery, Wi-Fi, sound, and system icons live. You’ll see a small sphinx silhouette - the Abliteration mark. It’s a monochrome icon, so it automatically adapts to your menu bar’s light or dark style.

If you don’t see it, Abliteration isn’t running. Open the app once from your Applications folder and it’ll appear.

Click the sphinx icon and a dropdown menu opens.

What’s in the menu

The menu has five main items, plus a Quit. Top to bottom:

Open Abliteration

Brings the main window to the front. If the window is hidden or the app is running in the background, this reveals it. If it’s already visible, this focuses it. Same effect as clicking the Dock icon.

Rig Bridge status

Shows the current state of the local HTTP bridge that Abliteration exposes to the abliteration.org website:

• 🟢 Running on :47821 - the bridge is up and answering requests. The website can read your hardware summary and recommend models that fit your machine.
• 🔴 Stopped - the bridge failed to bind (rare; usually a conflict on your local ports). The website will fall back to generic recommendations.

The port number reflects the port the app actually got. It’s usually 47821, but if that port was taken when the app started, it falls back to 47822 or 47823, and the menu shows the real one.

Copy the URL: click the row directly, or press ⌘C while the menu is open. The full URL - for example http://127.0.0.1:47821 - is copied to your clipboard. Paste it into a browser, a config file, or anywhere you need a reference to the bridge.

Useful for developers testing integrations, and occasionally for troubleshooting.

Current model

Shows the name of the model currently loaded into memory, for example Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct, or No model loaded if you haven’t picked one yet. This is a quick way to check what’s active without opening the main window.

The row isn’t clickable - it’s an at-a-glance status only.

New chat

Opens the main window and immediately creates a fresh chat. Skips the “click the app, click the pencil” flow if you want to jump straight in.

Preferences… (⌘,)

Opens the app’s Settings page. The keyboard shortcut ⌘, also works from inside the main window and matches the macOS convention every native app uses.

Quit Abliteration (⌘Q)

Fully terminates the app. The bridge stops answering, the main window closes, and the menu bar icon disappears. Standard macOS shortcut ⌘Q.

Closing the window is not the same as quitting

This is the most important thing to understand about the menu bar icon.

When you click the red close button (or press ⌘W), Abliteration hides its window but stays running. You still see:

• The Dock icon
• The menu bar icon
• The bridge still answering requests

To bring the window back, click Open Abliteration in the menu, or click the Dock icon.

Why it works this way: the local hardware bridge is what lets abliteration.org recommend models tailored to your machine. If closing the window killed the app, every time you visited the site you’d have to relaunch Abliteration first. Keeping it alive in the menu bar means the bridge is always there when the site asks - no friction.

To fully terminate the app (bridge included), use Quit in the menu or press ⌘Q.

How the menu bar enables site integration

When you visit the model catalogue on abliteration.org in your browser, the site checks whether Abliteration is running on your machine by requesting the local /rig endpoint. If it gets a response, the site knows your CPU, RAM, and GPU, and shows a green mark next to each model that will fit, plus a warning on models that won’t.

The menu bar icon is what makes this seamless: the bridge is available whether the main window is open or closed, so the site works whenever your Mac is on and Abliteration is somewhere in memory. No extra login, no extra configuration.

If you don’t want this integration active for a particular session, use Quit - the bridge stops immediately, and the site falls back to generic advice.

Privacy: the bridge exposes only your hardware summary (CPU model, total and free RAM, GPU name and VRAM if ≥ 2 GB) and the app version. It never exposes your chat history, model files, prompts, replies, or any personal information. See the Privacy Policy for the full statement.

On Windows: the system tray

On Windows, the equivalent lives in the system tray next to the clock, in the bottom-right of your screen. Click the sphinx icon there and you get two options:

• Open Abliteration - reveals the main window.
• Quit - fully terminates the app.

The Windows tray menu is smaller because Windows apps have different conventions around window state - the tray on Windows is more of a “minimise here” affordance than a full status hub. The core behaviour is the same: closing the window keeps the app alive in the tray, and the bridge keeps serving until you Quit.

For richer status (bridge state, current model, quick actions), open the main window and check the HARDWARE and MODELS pages.

Related

• Deep links (abliteration:// URLs) - how staying warm lets the site hand off models to the app
• Local HTTP bridge - the localhost endpoint the site probes
• The site says “install the app” even though I have the app on macOS - how to fix a missing bridge