A terminal glued to the macOS dock
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Every single day of my life since I started programming back in 2020 I open my projects through the terminal/ghostty. "cd path" + "code .". Until today I don't even know how to open vscode first then open a project from there.I usually have 3-4 vscode windows open at the same time, and I like them in separate desktops (for mac users). i gotta admit, i use 8 desktops, 3-4 for vscode, 1 for arc, 1 for docker, 1 for postman etc.So my daily routine when I turned on my mac was: (1) open ghostty; (2) cd-path+code.; (3) drag the vscode window to a desired desktop; (4) get back to the ghostty desktop; (5) repeat until all is open.i was unbothered for 6y. Until i realized how inefficient i was being: (1) opening ghostty just to run one-off commands to open another app felt wrong, like why do I need a terminal if it's not a process I need to watch; (2) the need to go back to the ghostty desktop every time i wanted to open a new project and drag it to a new desktop and switch back... it's funny how we simply accept a habit and don't bother to fix iti wanted a terminal that persisted across desktops AND that was always visible so i could access it anytime AND that wasn't big because i would only run one-off commands. so I created starboard.where could I fit a terminal that was always visible and accessible? i looked at the macOS dock, i looked at the empty space to its right, and I said "that's it".starboard is a floating terminal window that's literally glued to the dock, filling the blank space to the right, tracking its height and position live. it's visible from any desktop, a real companion to the dock, and it's a persistent shell.to close the story on my routine, I now can happily jump straight to the desktop i want my project to be in and open it there through Starboard. i rarely open ghostyy, unless i really need it.here's where feedback is massively important. i built this for the way i work with it, the way my dock is, which is in the bottom. my dock's position and height give me a perfect sized Starboard with 3 visible lines that I can happily work with. hearing from you guys how it appears to you would be essential for further improvement.
HN · launched Aug 6, 2026 · 55 upvotes (top 13%) · 1 view
Niche: terminal emulators and utilities · 106 launches, 1 in the last 7 days ▼ -88% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Prosumer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 106 launches in terminal emulators and utilities →
Could you build this?
Partial The UI and process spawning logic are standard, but hooking or anchoring a persistent native window dynamically to the macOS Dock requires obscure macOS accessibility or private windowing APIs.
What it would actually take: A native Swift/Objective-C macOS helper application is needed that monitors Dock orientation, dimensions, and events via macOS Accessibility APIs (AXUIElement) or CoreGraphics window management. Handling dock positioning, multi-monitor shifts, and embeddable pseudo-terminal (PTY) emulation requires low-level macOS system programming expertise.
Discussion
18 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Claude Code CLI, Ghostty, VS Code, cmux
Concerns raised: Only supports bottom dock placement, not left/right, Single monitor support only, no multi-monitor, Default width too narrow (4-5 characters), Auto-hide dock property causes width issues, macOS ad-hoc signing warning on download
Feature requests: Support for left/right dock placement, Multi-monitor support, Auto-expand width based on content, Persistent terminal window option instead of dock-glued UI, Better integration with agent/long-running processes
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 597 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #150 of 598 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 279 days after the earliest competitor.
- Dockside · hn · 2026-07-03 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Waffle · hn · 2026-04-11 · 40 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Toastty · ph · 2026-09-18 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Deckard, Claude-first terminal manager · hn · 2026-04-02 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- boringBar · hn · 2026-04-12 · 520 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- DockThumb · ph · 2026-10-16 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- cmux · hn · 2026-02-19 · 198 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- terminal-mac · github · 2026-11-03 · 2226 upvotes · similarity 0.48
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.