Barley

Barley is an offline native macOS utility app for day-to-day developer tasks. It runs as a real app window and also exposes a menu bar item for fast feature selection. Your data stays in you computer for JWT decoding, WCAG contrast checking, and video-to-GIF conversion.

Features

• JWT Decoder
  • Decode JWT header and payload locally
  • Search flattened claims by key/value
  • No signature verification yet
• WCAG Contrast Checker
  • Check foreground/background HEX combinations
  • Reports AA/AAA results for common WCAG criteria
• Video to GIF
  • Convert .mov/.mp4 to GIF locally
  • Select FPS and output scale
  • Uses ffmpeg by default for consistent output, with native fallback
  • Keeps a recent output list with per-file Reveal in Finder

Barley opens as a normal, focusable macOS window, or you can pick a feature from the menu bar to open/focus the window with that feature active. Everything runs offline — no cloud services involved.

Running Locally

Requirements:

• macOS 13+
• Xcode 16+ (or a compatible Swift 6 toolchain), with command line tools installed (xcode-select --install)
• Optional: ffmpeg via Homebrew for the default Video-to-GIF engine

Clone and run:

git clone https://github.com/eggei/barley.git
cd barley
swift run

Or open Package.swift in Xcode and run the Barley scheme.

Installing the barley Command

Build a release binary and link it onto your PATH so you can launch Barley from any terminal with barley:

swift build -c release
sudo ln -sf "$(pwd)/.build/release/Barley" /usr/local/bin/barley

Now barley opens the app window from anywhere.

Auto-Launch at Startup (launchd)

To have Barley start automatically when you log in, register it as a launchd agent:

1. Create ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.eggei.barley.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
  "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.eggei.barley</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/barley</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

2. Load it:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.eggei.barley.plist

To stop auto-launching, unload and remove it:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.eggei.barley.plist
rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.eggei.barley.plist

License

No license file is currently included. Add one before public reuse/distribution.

Contributing / Development

• Built with Swift 6, SwiftUI + AppKit, and Swift Package Manager.
• Business logic lives in Sources/Barley/Core/ and Sources/Barley/Features/*; keep SwiftUI views in Sources/Barley/UI/ thin.
• Run tests with swift test; add new tests under Tests/BarleyTests/ when introducing new behavior.