Questions people ask

Why is there no Claude sign-in window?

Because subtank never signs in to Claude itself. Claude’s numbers come from your own Claude Code: subtank runs the claude you installed and asks it for its usage — the same numbers Claude Code shows you, with no model request. Anthropic’s terms rule out signing in to claude.ai inside other apps, and Claude Code renews its sign-in with a single-use token: an app that renewed it would sign Claude Code out.

• The account Claude Code uses now needs nothing extra. Sign in to Claude Code as you always do, and subtank finds it; a CC mark shows which account that is.
• Another Claude account: ＋ → Claude → Sign in with your browser. That runs Claude Code’s own sign-in into a separate profile inside subtank’s folder. Your browser opens on Claude’s page, and your current Claude Code login stays as it is.
• Claude Code not installed? subtank needs it to read Claude. Install it, sign in, then choose “Scan this Mac again” from subtank’s menu.

Keychain prompts

subtank never reads another app’s Keychain item. When it looks around on first launch, it checks only whether Claude Code’s and Codex’s items exist, which raises no prompt; Claude Code, Codex and the GitHub CLI read their own.

subtank does keep secrets of its own in your Keychain, under the service subtank: Kilo device-code sign-ins, OpenRouter’s key and API keys you paste. Electron, which subtank is built on, adds one more, subtank Safe Storage, the key that encrypts the cookies of in-app sign-in pages.

macOS asks for your password before a different copy of subtank opens those items — a build made from source, or a copy restored onto a new Mac. Enter it and click Always Allow, and that copy is not asked again. Updates are signed by the same developer, so an update does not ask. If you click Deny, only the account that needs the item stops updating.

I can’t see the icon in the menu bar

Press ⌥⇧Space to open the list from anywhere (Settings → General changes the shortcut), or open subtank again from Applications or Spotlight: it shows its Settings window instead of doing nothing. Then:

• Behind the notch. On a MacBook with a notch, icons that do not fit beside it are hidden. Quit a few menu-bar apps, or make room with a menu-bar manager.
• A menu-bar manager such as Bartender or Ice may have put subtank in its hidden section. Move it to the visible one.
• Turned off. On macOS 26 and later, open System Settings → Menu Bar and check that subtank is on under “Allow in the Menu Bar”. The last step of subtank’s setup has a button that opens that page.

Why is a number a dash, or dimmed?

A — means the service did not give that number; subtank never shows a guess as 0. Dimmed numbers are the last ones that were read, shown with their age, because the latest read failed — a timeout or a busy server never erases them. A sign in chip means the sign-in behind that account needs you, and its row has a Fix button.

The subtank command and Claude Code’s status line

Whenever its numbers change, subtank writes one line — the account to use, what is left, the next reset — and the subtank command prints it. The Homebrew cask puts the command on your PATH; from the disk image it is inside the app, at /Applications/subtank.app/Contents/Resources/bin/subtank.

subtank            # the one-line status (the same as subtank status)
subtank json       # every account, as JSON
subtank open       # open subtank

To show it under Claude Code’s prompt, add a statusLine block to ~/.claude/settings.json:

{"statusLine":{"type":"command","command":"subtank status"}}

That works once the cask has linked the command. Settings → Advanced in subtank shows the exact block for your copy, with the full path when the command is not on your PATH. The command only reads a file subtank wrote: it holds no token and talks to no one, and when the line is more than 20 minutes old it says so.

Uninstalling

1. Reset first, to leave nothing behind. Settings → Advanced → Reset everything removes your accounts, the profiles subtank created and its own Keychain items — the part no uninstaller can reach.
2. Quit subtank from its menu, then drag it from Applications to the Trash. Its data stays in ~/Library/Application Support/subtank until you delete that folder.
3. With Homebrew, brew uninstall --cask subtank removes the app, and brew uninstall --zap --cask subtank also deletes its files in ~/Library: Application Support, caches, preferences and logs.

What zap cannot reach Keychain items are not files, so neither the Trash nor --zap removes them: the items under the service subtank, and subtank Safe Storage. Reset everything removes subtank’s own; to be sure, open Keychain Access, search for “subtank” and delete what it finds.

Nothing subtank reads belongs to it: ~/.claude, ~/.codex, Cursor and the GitHub CLI stay exactly as they are.

Reporting a problem

Open an issue at github.com/subtank-dev/subtank/issues. Say which version you have (Settings → About), your macOS version, which service it is about, and what you saw.

Never paste a token, an API key, or a file such as auth.json or .claude.json into an issue. Nobody working on subtank will ask for one.