Download BurnCast

Get the disk image

Open the disk image and drag BurnCast to Applications. There is no installer, no helper daemon, no login item and no account. The app appears in the menu bar and starts reading the logs already on your Mac.

Verify what you downloaded

You do not have to take our word for what is in the file. macOS checks the notarization ticket for you when you open it, and you can check the fingerprint yourself:

SHA-256:

9f6baa2132ab065ea15478ce059ce5972e9a72ef7c83aa6f6c2704c04f30b794

Compare it against your copy:

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/BurnCast-1.0.121.dmg

And confirm macOS itself is satisfied with the signature and the ticket:

spctl -a -vvv -t install ~/Downloads/BurnCast-1.0.121.dmg

That should answer accepted, with source=Notarized Developer ID. If it says anything else, do not open it. Tell us instead.

First run

Because the build is notarized, macOS opens it without the “unidentified developer” dialog. On first launch BurnCast reads ~/.claude/projects, builds its history, and puts a meter in the menu bar. A full parse of a large corpus takes a couple of seconds; after that it re-syncs incrementally and the cost disappears.

If the meter shows a dash instead of a number, it has not found any session logs yet. The support page covers what to check.

Turning on the exact gauge

Out of the box, BurnCast estimates your usage from the logs. That estimate is good, but it is still an estimate. Claude Code itself knows the real account percentages, and it will hand them over if you let BurnCast install a small status-line helper, at Settings → Official usage gauge → Install helper. Both builds have it; the App Store build keeps the helper inside the app and runs it sandboxed.

With the helper installed, the app quotes a real account percentage rather than guessing from a log estimate, and the 90% / 95% / 99% alerts become available.

If you use the Claude desktop app, this build has a second route to the same figures and needs no helper for it: leave the desktop app's menu-bar icon on and BurnCast reads your account's usage from what it already keeps on disk. The helper is still worth installing if you also work in a terminal, since that is what covers those sessions.

Updating

BurnCast does not check for updates, because it contains no networking code at all. An update check would be the one thing that made the privacy claim on this site untrue. Check for Updates in the menu opens this page in your browser, and a new version is the same drag to Applications.

Your history lives in ~/Library/Application Support/BurnCast and is not touched by replacing the app.

Uninstalling

If you installed the status-line helper, remove it first, at Settings → Official usage gauge → Remove helper, so Claude Code's own configuration is put back the way it was. This applies to both builds. Then:

• Drag BurnCast from Applications to the Trash.
• Delete ~/Library/Application Support/BurnCast.

That is everything. There is no daemon to stop, no login item to unregister, and no receipt left in a system directory.

Release notes

1.0.121 · 30 August 2026

Changes since the first public build.

• Reads the Claude desktop app. If you have it installed with its menu-bar icon on, BurnCast picks up your account's real figures from it, with no helper and no terminal. Direct download only: the App Store build is sandboxed and cannot reach those files.
• A setup checklist on first run. What stands between the app and exact figures, in order, each with the button that handles it, rather than being discovered later one screen at a time.
• Every limit your plan carries. Windows are read from your account as it reports them, so a per-model or per-surface limit shows up without waiting for a new build.
• Says what it is waiting for. A silent gauge now explains itself instead of leaving a dash: whether the helper never ran, was taken over by another copy, or has simply gone stale.
• The meter keeps time on an idle Mac. macOS App Nap no longer freezes the menu bar between turns.
• The build number is in the version, and this page reads its checksum off the published file rather than a local one.

1.0.0 · 26 August 2026

The first public build.

• Menu-bar meter. A live pace reading, tokens spent against time elapsed, sitting in the menu bar with the “Now” popover behind it.
• Three windows. The five-hour session, the weekly limit and the separate Opus weekly limit, with the binding one called out.
• Forecasting. A personal baseline learned from your own history, a weekday profile, and a projection band rather than a single confident line.
• Searched advice. Model and effort changes measured against your remaining hours, with the cheapest workable one recommended.
• The exact gauge. An optional, reversible status-line helper that reads real account percentages from Claude Code.
• Alerts. A pace ladder (advisory, heads-up, critical) and one level alert per window at 90%, 95% and 99%.

Known gaps in this build: multi-anchor calibration still resolves against a single anchor, and the week chart does not yet mark the receipts behind each day.