Install KeepGoing Desktop Tray with Homebrew

If you are on macOS and want the KeepGoing Desktop Tray, you can now install it with a single command.

brew install --cask keepgoing

That is it. No DMG to download, no dragging to Applications, no manual updates. Homebrew handles all of it.

What the Desktop Tray does

The Desktop Tray sits in your menu bar and gives you a live view of everything happening across your projects. Click the icon and you see:

• Momentum per project: the last thing worked on, how long ago, and what to do next
• Live sessions: any active agents or editors currently writing checkpoints, with branch and recency info
• Re-entry briefings: when you have been away from a project, a full briefing opens automatically so you pick up where you left off without hunting through git logs or commit messages

The tray is the at-a-glance layer. You do not need to open VS Code or a terminal to remember what you were doing. You just look at the menu bar.

Works with any editor

The Desktop Tray reads .keepgoing/ data written by the VS Code extension, JetBrains plugin, MCP server, or CLI. It does not care which tool created the data, only that the data exists.

This means it pairs naturally with whatever you are already using:

• VS Code or Cursor: install the extension, and the tray picks up your sessions automatically
• JetBrains IDEs: install the plugin, same result
• Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or any MCP client: configure the MCP server and the tray reads from it
• Terminal-only: use the CLI to save checkpoints, and the tray sees those too

If you switch editors between projects, or you run AI coding agents alongside your own work, the tray keeps everything in one place.

Auto-discovery

Projects do not need manual configuration. Once any KeepGoing tool writes a .keepgoing/ directory into a project, the tray finds it. Open the Desktop Tray preferences, add your root workspace folder, and it scans for all projects from there.

If you use the VS Code extension with the workspace scanner already set up, the tray just works. No extra steps.

What you see in the menu bar

When nothing is active, the tray shows a quiet “KG” monogram. When sessions are running, you get a status dot and a count:

• KG 2 with a green dot: two sessions actively working
• KG 3 with an amber dot: sessions running but idle
• KG 1 with a red dot: a file conflict detected between sessions

Clicking the icon opens a dropdown with per-project session rows showing the tool, branch, and how recently it checked in. A second click opens the full briefing window with next steps and context.

After installing

Once Homebrew finishes, open KeepGoing from your Applications folder or Spotlight. It will appear in the menu bar immediately. From there, open Preferences and point it at your workspace root.

For a full walkthrough of the setup options and how to connect it to your existing KeepGoing setup, see the Desktop Tray integration guide.

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Your momentum should be visible before you even open an editor.