About
Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage©
A real-time Claude usage monitor giving individuals, teams, and businesses precise, up-to-the-second metrics, visibility, and actionable insights.
A real-time Claude usage monitor giving individuals, teams, and businesses precise, up-to-the-second metrics, visibility, and actionable insights.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Requires Claude Pro or Max plan · macOS Menu Bar App
Your token budget is your Claude plan's allowance — the rolling 5-hour sessions, weekly limits, and messages it gives you. Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © is a lightweight macOS menu bar app that monitors your Claude AI message quota in real-time. It silently polls the Claude API in the background and displays a color-coded fuel gauge icon — so you always know, at a glance, how much of your session and weekly allowance remains.
No browser tab open. No manual refreshing. Just a tiny icon in your menu bar that tells the truth.
There are other ways to track Claude usage — VS Code extensions, Chrome browser add-ons, terminal scripts. They all work, within their context. But if you write in one app, code in another, and research in a third, none of them follow you. Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © lives in the macOS menu bar, so it's always visible regardless of which app has focus. One glance. Every app. Always on.
Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © auto-detects your Claude plan and sets the correct limits automatically. You can also override them manually.
| Plan | Session (5h) | Weekly (7d) |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Pro | 45 messages | 240 messages |
| Claude Max 5× | 225 messages | 1,200 messages |
| Claude Max 20× ★ | 900 messages | 4,800 messages |
Limits are set by Anthropic and may change.
Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © reads your existing Claude session cookies from the system cookie store — the same ones your browser uses when you're logged into claude.ai. It then calls the Claude usage API to fetch your current consumption and displays it as a percentage.
Your credentials never leave your Mac. There are no third-party servers, no accounts to create, and no data collection of any kind. It's just your Mac talking to Anthropic's API on your behalf.
One detail worth knowing: Claude's session limit is a rolling 5-hour window, not a fixed daily reset. Messages you sent more than 5 hours ago gradually free up again. Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © tracks this in real time, so the number you see always reflects what you actually have available right now — not what you started with at the top of the day.
The menu bar icon changes color as your usage climbs, giving you instant feedback without needing to open anything.
Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © is a native macOS application built with SwiftUI and Apple's MenuBarExtra API. It uses Combine for reactive state management, Network framework for connectivity monitoring.
Everything Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © can do, in one place.
Monitor your 5-hour rolling window in real-time. Know exactly how many messages remain before Claude slows you down — so you can pace yourself instead of hitting a wall.
Track your 7-day usage alongside your session limit. Get the complete picture of your Claude consumption at a glance — and spot patterns before they cost you a Monday morning.
Configurable session alerts at 70% and 90% (adjustable to any threshold), weekly alerts at 80% and 95%, and a pace alert when less than 10 minutes remain. Get nudged before you hit the wall — not after you've lost your train of thought mid-session.
Automatically detects your plan — Pro, Max 5×, or Max 20×. No manual configuration needed; it just works. The right limits, from the first launch.
Set refresh from 15 seconds to 2 hours. Balance live accuracy with API courtesy — your call, your cadence.
Built with SwiftUI and MenuBarExtra. Zero clutter, zero browser tabs — just a tiny icon in exactly the right place. Works across every app on your Mac.
Confirms when data was last retrieved (e.g. "Synced 53s ago") and displays the active polling interval. Ensures displayed figures are never stale without requiring a manual refresh.
Detects whether you are currently in an off-peak period and flags it as a good time to batch high-volume tasks. Configurable peak windows for weekday evenings and all-day weekends in your local timezone.
Directional arrows next to session and weekly headings show whether usage is climbing, dropping, or holding steady — powered by the UsageHistory engine running silently in the background.
One-click access to Reset, Stats, Export, and Pause directly from the menu. Fast control over tracking state without navigating into settings.
Manually adjust the recorded usage count if the app's tally diverges from your actual account state. Keeps the gauge accurate without waiting for an automatic resync.
Set your own 5-hour session cap and weekly message ceiling to match your subscription tier. Ensures threshold alerts and gauge colors reflect your actual plan.
Configure which events trigger alerts — approaching session or weekly limits — so you are warned before hitting a cap, never after.
A guided onboarding flow for first-time configuration, plus an on-demand setup verification tool to diagnose connection or configuration issues at any time.
Check for the latest version directly from the menu. Keeps the app current with any changes to Claude's API response format or rate-limit structure.
Force an immediate data fetch at any time using ⌘R, without waiting for the next polling interval.
Authenticate your Claude account directly within the app to authorise usage data retrieval. Your credentials never leave your Mac.
Central configuration panel (⌘,) for all app preferences, accessed via the standard macOS keyboard shortcut.
Predicts how long your current session quota will last at your present messaging pace. Uses a rolling burn rate with exponential decay weighting — recent activity counts more than older data. Shows estimates like ~14 min at this pace in the menu, and fires a dedicated alert when you’re less than 10 minutes from empty.
Wire Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © into Apple Shortcuts and Siri. Four live actions expose session state, usage percentage, messages remaining, and time to empty. Threshold events can trigger your own Shortcuts automatically — switch Focus Mode, set Reminders, log usage to a spreadsheet, and more.
The Range Estimator predicts how long your current 5-hour session quota will last at your present messaging pace.
How it works
Each time the app polls your Claude usage, it records a data point in a rolling time window. It then calculates a burn rate (messages consumed per second) using exponential decay weighting — recent activity carries more weight than older data. That rate is projected forward to estimate when your remaining messages will run out.
A minimum of 2 data points with a positive usage delta are required before an estimate is displayed. If usage is idle or insufficient data exists, the placeholder “Measures burn rate, estimates your remaining mileage.” is shown instead.
Display formats
The estimate appears in the menu under Range Estimator (Time Till Empty): using the following formats:
| Remaining time | Example |
|---|---|
| Under 1 minute | < 1 min at this pace |
| 1–59 minutes | ~5 min at this pace |
| Exact hours | ~1hr at this pace |
| Hours and minutes | ~2hr 30min at this pace |
Color coding
The estimate text is color-coded based on time remaining — independently of the session gauge color:
| Time to empty | Color | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Under 5 minutes | 🔴 Red | < 1 min at this pace |
| 5 – 30 minutes | 🟠 Orange | ~5 min at this pace |
| 30 minutes – 2 hours | 🟡 Yellow | ~1hr at this pace |
| 2 hours or more | 🟢 Green | ~2hr 30min at this pace |
Diagnostics & testing
A built-in test is available under Settings → Diagnostics → Test Range Estimator. Clicking the button opens the main menu automatically, waits 2 seconds, then injects mock usage data and cycles through all four display format examples — each shown for 5 seconds. The label shows Range Estimator (Time Till Empty): TEST while the test is active. Test data is cleared automatically after 27 seconds.
Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © connects to Apple Shortcuts in two directions: it exposes live session data as actions you can use in any shortcut, and it can automatically trigger your own Shortcuts when usage thresholds are reached.
Available Shortcuts actions
These four actions appear in Shortcuts.app under the Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © category, and are also available via Spotlight and Siri:
| Action | Returns | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Get Claude Session Usage | Number 0–100 | Current 5-hour session usage as a percentage |
| Get Claude Messages Remaining | Number | Messages left in the current 5-hour session |
| Get Claude Session State | Text | Color-coded state: green, yellow, orange, red, or stop |
| Get Claude Time to Empty | Number (minutes) | Estimated minutes until session limit; −1 if not yet computable |
Two pre-built Shortcuts appear automatically in Spotlight and Siri — no setup required. You can also ask Siri directly: "How long until my Claude session ends?"
Threshold firing
Configure Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © to run a named Shortcut automatically when a threshold triggers. Go to Settings → Shortcuts and enter the exact name of a Shortcut you've created in Shortcuts.app for any of the four triggers below:
| Trigger | When it fires |
|---|---|
| Run when caution fires | Session crosses the caution threshold (default 70%) |
| Run when warning fires | Session crosses the warning threshold (default 90%) |
| Run when pace alert fires | Time to empty drops below 10 minutes |
| Run when session resets | A new 5-hour session window is detected |
Example automations
Switch to Do Not Disturb when your session hits 90%. Create a Reminder when the pace alert fires. Log usage to a Numbers spreadsheet at each threshold crossing. Turn off Do Not Disturb automatically when your session resets. The current usage percentage is passed to your Shortcut as its input — use it in an If block to branch your logic.
Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © fires macOS notifications when usage crosses configured thresholds. Each alert fires once per crossing — it will not re-fire until usage drops below the threshold and crosses it again (for example, after a session reset).
Session alerts
| Alert | Default threshold | Adjustable |
|---|---|---|
| Session caution | 70% | 1–99% via slider |
| Session warning | 90% | 1–99% via slider |
| Pace alert | Time to empty < 10 min | On/off only |
Weekly alerts
| Alert | Default threshold | Adjustable |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly caution | 80% | 1–99% via slider |
| Weekly critical | 95% | 1–99% via slider |
Snooze
Enable Snooze in Settings → Notifications to have any alert re-fire after a delay you choose (5 to 120 minutes). Useful when you want a reminder but aren't ready to act immediately. Snooze is available for all session and weekly alerts.
Tip: Set the alert style to Persistent in System Settings → Notifications → Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © so alerts remain on screen until manually dismissed.
"Token budget" is our shorthand for your Claude plan's allowance. Claude.ai meters that allowance in messages across rolling 5-hour sessions and weekly limits — and that's exactly what Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © tracks, in real time, from your menu bar.
It reads your existing Claude session cookies from the macOS system cookie store — the same cookies your browser already holds when you're logged into claude.ai. Using those credentials, it calls Anthropic's usage API directly from your Mac.
There is no middleman. Your Mac talks directly to Anthropic's servers, exactly the same way your browser does. No data passes through any third-party infrastructure, and nothing is stored outside your device.
Yes, it's safe. Session cookies are not your password — they are temporary authentication tokens that your browser already uses every time you load claude.ai. Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © reads these tokens from the macOS system cookie store and uses them to fetch your usage percentage. That's all.
The tokens are stored in the macOS Keychain — Apple's encrypted, sandboxed credential store — and never transmitted to anyone except Anthropic's own API. The app cannot read your conversations, change your account settings, or take any action on your behalf.
For full details, see our Privacy Policy.
Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © uses the same session-based API your browser uses at claude.ai, so it's subject to whatever Anthropic changes over time. Realistically, Anthropic makes these changes occasionally, and we update the app to match — just as any third-party tool does.
If the API changes and a fix is needed, we push an update. If Anthropic ever releases an official, sanctioned usage-monitoring API, we'll migrate to it immediately. And if something breaks in the meantime and you're within your refund window, Apple will give you your money back — no questions asked (see the refund question below).
You need an active Claude Pro, Max 5×, or Max 20× subscription. Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © tracks the message quota that comes with these paid plans — that's the number it reads and displays.
The free Claude tier doesn't expose the same quota data via the API, so the app has nothing meaningful to show. If you're on the free tier and regularly hitting Claude's limits, that's usually a sign a paid plan would save you real time — and Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © is built to help you get the most out of it once you do.
Yes. Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © runs natively on both Apple Silicon (M1 and later) and Intel Macs. The minimum requirement is macOS 14 Sonoma — if your Mac can run Sonoma, it can run Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage ©.
Yes. Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © is sold exclusively through the Apple Mac App Store, which means Apple's standard refund policy applies. If the app doesn't work as expected, request a refund directly through Apple within 14 days of purchase — Apple processes it, no involvement from us required.
To request a refund, visit reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in with your Apple ID, find the purchase, and select "Request a refund." It takes a minute and Apple is generally straightforward about it.
Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © monitors usage on the Claude.ai subscription platform — the account you use at claude.ai in your browser. It tracks the message quota that comes with your Pro or Max plan.
It does not monitor usage billed through the Anthropic developer API (api.anthropic.com), which operates on a pay-per-token basis with no fixed message limit. If you access Claude exclusively through the API with your own key, this app isn't the right tool for that use case.
Right now, Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © is built exclusively for Claude. The integration goes deep — reading native session data and speaking directly to Anthropic's API — so supporting other services isn't simply a matter of flipping a switch.
That said… we're not exactly sitting still. Let's just say the name Klaude wasn't chosen entirely by accident, and what we're quietly working on next might make that silent 'K' start to make a lot more sense. Watch this space. 👀
Free alternatives exist — VS Code extensions, Chrome browser add-ons, command-line monitors — and they're genuinely useful if you live inside a single tool. But they only show you your quota when that specific app is in focus. If you use Claude across multiple apps throughout your day, you're blind the moment you switch context.
Klaude Fuel Gauge - AI Usage © is a native macOS app. It lives in your menu bar, which means it's always visible, regardless of which app you're in. It's also built with SwiftUI — not a browser extension or an Electron wrapper — so it's fast, lightweight, and feels like it belongs on your Mac.
Everything you just read ships in one lightweight menu bar app.
One-time purchase. No subscription.
Price in USD · local price & any applicable taxes (GST/VAT) are set by the App Store and shown at checkout.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Requires Claude Pro or Max plan · macOS Menu Bar App