macOS app

DefenseClaw for macOS, the native menu-bar companion app. Its panels, and how the menu bar, notifications, the Overview card, the Sandboxes panel and the Sandbox wizard work with NVIDIA OpenShell sandboxes.

DefenseClaw for macOS is a native companion app for Apple-silicon Macs running macOS 14 or newer. It adds a menu-bar status view, dashboards, setup forms, and one-click install and update of the DefenseClaw runtime. It works only with the DefenseClaw installation on this Mac: the gateway API on 127.0.0.1, and the audit database, logs, and configuration under ~/.defenseclaw. Actions that change something run the defenseclaw CLI, and their output appears in the Activity panel. Sandbox unblocks and ask answers go straight to the DefenseClaw daemon's API instead.

Install

Download DefenseClawMac-<version>-macos-arm64.dmg from the Download page (it is attached to each GitHub release).
Open the DMG, drag DefenseClawMac to Applications, and launch it.
If the DefenseClaw CLI and gateway are not installed yet, the Set Up DefenseClaw window offers Install DefenseClaw Runtime. It downloads the matching release's install.sh, checks it against the release's checksums.txt, and installs the CLI and gateway into ~/.defenseclaw and ~/.local/bin. Progress shows in Activity. If you already installed DefenseClaw with install.sh, the app uses that installation.
The same window then sets up the agents to guard: detected agents are pre-selected, and you pick observe or action mode.

Releases are signed and notarized when the release has Apple signing set up; otherwise the app is only ad-hoc signed and macOS Gatekeeper asks before the first launch. Update in the app installs the latest release the same way and keeps your configuration, tokens, and audit database. Running install.sh again also updates the app in /Applications or ~/Applications; see Upgrade.

Panels

The main window's sidebar groups the panels:

Group	Panels
Monitor	Overview (gateway health, connectors, enforcement counts, Doctor, AI Discovery), Alerts, Logs, Audit, Activity (output of the commands the app runs)
Govern	Skills, MCPs, Plugins, Tools, Sandboxes
Discover	Inventory, AI Discovery, Runtime (what actually ran), Registries
Configure	Setup: the setup forms, including the Sandbox wizard, and the config editor

Most panels match the TUI panels. The app has no Policies panel: manage policies and rule packs in the TUI (P) or with the CLI. Settings has General, Monitoring, Notifications, and Connection tabs.

The menu-bar popover shows the gateway state, each connector's mode with its call and block counts, and recent events, with Open DefenseClaw, Ack All, Pause (stops monitoring until you resume), and Quit. Closing the main window keeps DefenseClaw running in the menu bar.

OpenShell sandboxes

On a Mac, sandboxes are MicroVMs that work on a copy

Docker Desktop's Linux VM kernel has no Landlock, so on a Mac DefenseClaw runs sandboxes in OpenShell MicroVMs (OpenShell's vm driver: Apple silicon only, experimental upstream). A MicroVM mounts no host folders, so every run works on a copy of your project, and defenseclaw sandbox pull <name> brings the changes back (see sandboxes on macOS). The status line names the gateway's driver: (MicroVM), or (docker).

For a task-by-task summary, see Sandboxes in the TUI and macOS app. This section is the full reference.

When sandboxes are on (see the sandbox guide), the app shows the sandboxes the DefenseClaw daemon runs in four places: the menu bar, desktop notifications, an Overview card and the Sandboxes panel. It reads the daemon's /api/v1/sandbox API on every refresh of the app (every 5 seconds by default). When a refresh fails, the app keeps the last good snapshot and says so. A harness session needs a terminal, so the app never starts or attaches one: it copies the defenseclaw sandbox run or defenseclaw sandbox connect command for you to paste into Terminal.

The menu-bar popover gets a Sandboxes section once sandboxes are on:

the number of active sandboxes (or "unavailable"); click it to open the Sandboxes panel;
up to three active sandboxes with their harness and uptime, marked orange when one has an alert;
up to two blocked destinations, each with Unblock, which lifts the block for that sandbox only (unblock everywhere from the panel);
up to two waiting asks, with Approve and Reject.

Notifications

With Notify on sandbox blocked destinations and asks (with Unblock) on (Settings, Notifications; on by default), the app posts a notification for:

Event	Notification	Buttons
A blocked destination you can unblock	"Blocked `<host>`": the sandbox tried to reach it, and why	Unblock for this sandbox, Review
An ask	"`<sandbox>` asks for access", and what it wants to reach	Review
A new git repository in a mounted project	"`<sandbox>`: planted git repository"	Review
Hooks that cannot reach DefenseClaw	"`<sandbox>`: hooks are not reaching DefenseClaw"	Review

Unblock for this sandbox needs an unlocked Mac: from the lock screen, macOS asks you to unlock first, so nobody at a locked Mac can lift a block. It lifts the block for that one sandbox; unblocking a host in every sandbox is a confirmed choice in the Sandboxes panel only. Review, or a click on the notification, opens the Sandboxes panel.

Notifications name the destination and the sandbox only, never request content. A destination blocked again within a minute does not notify again, and events from before the app started do not notify at all. Sandbox notifications also show while the app is in front.

Overview card

The Overview panel shows a Sandboxes card once sandboxes are on: the status line, and the counts of active sandboxes, blocked sites, waiting asks and alerts. Open Sandboxes opens the panel.

Sandboxes panel

Open Sandboxes in the sidebar (Govern), or press ⌘⇧B. The sidebar item shows how many asks are waiting. The header has the daemon's status line and your organization's policy when openshell.admin is set, plus two buttons: Copy run command copies cd <project> && defenseclaw sandbox run claude, and Refresh reads the daemon again. When sandboxes are off, the panel offers Open Setup; when they are unavailable, Run sandbox doctor.

The panel has four parts:

Sandboxes: a table with Name, Phase, Harness, Pack/Profile, Mode, Up, Sites (contacted and blocked) and Alerts (hover for the list).
The selected sandbox: its harness, project, skip-permissions mode, tool calls, hook events (the verdicts per hook event, such as PreToolUse 12 · PostToolUse 11 · Stop 2), last tool block, undo, the run image when it has one (on a MicroVM gateway, the image its harness settings are baked into) and alerts, with these actions:
- Stop… asks first, then runs defenseclaw sandbox stop <name> --yes; defenseclaw sandbox connect <name> resumes it. A detached run still going ends: DefenseClaw marks it interrupted and keeps its log for defenseclaw sandbox logs <name>.
- Review changes runs defenseclaw sandbox review <name>.
- Undo… asks first, then runs defenseclaw sandbox undo <name> --yes, which stops the sandbox and puts the project folder back to its pre-session snapshot.
- Copy connect command copies the resume command.
A sandbox that works on a copy (every sandbox on a MicroVM gateway) has no review. Instead:
- Copy pull command copies defenseclaw sandbox pull <name>. In Terminal it shows the changes, and --apply, --branch or --patch-out FILE brings them back.
- Pull to branch runs defenseclaw sandbox pull <name> --branch: the work lands on branch dc/<name> and your working tree stays as it is. A change that can run code on your Mac is not brought back this way; pull it in Terminal, where it asks.
- Undo… asks first, then runs defenseclaw sandbox undo <name> --yes, which reverts the last pull --apply. Edits you made since stay; if one changed the same files, nothing is reverted and Activity says why.
Asks: each waiting ask with Approve, Always… (asks first: every future sandbox may reach the destination too) and Reject.
Activity: the 60 newest events of the live feed. A blocked destination you can lift has an Unblock menu: Only in the sandbox, or In every sandbox (always)…, which asks first and adds the host to openshell.egress.unblocked. Private networks stay closed either way. A lifted block reads "unblocked".

The alerts are the same as in the TUI: hook tamper, a planted git repository, hooks that cannot reach DefenseClaw, silent hooks, and a sandbox without a DefenseClaw binding; see Alerts and notifications. The actions are unavailable while the installation is read-only.

Sandbox wizard

Setup → Sandbox runs the one-time sandbox setup, like the TUI's Sandbox wizard, with the same command: defenseclaw sandbox setup --non-interactive plus the flags your answers choose. Its fields are the action (setup, or doctor to only check this machine), Claude Code and Codex (at least one; defaults follow openshell.harnesses), Shell wrappers and Build images now. There is no telemetry question: the Homebrew gateway does not read gateway.env, so setup cannot turn OpenShell's anonymous usage telemetry off on a Mac (see sandbox setup). Nor is there a mounts question: setup sets compute_driver = "vm" in the gateway's gateway.toml, restarts the gateway once, and every run works on a copy. The first run of each image prepares its MicroVM disk, which takes about a minute and 5 GB.

The app never installs OpenShell. When OpenShell or e2fsprogs (which the MicroVM driver formats its disks with) is missing, run this in Terminal first; it installs NVIDIA's nvidia/openshell Homebrew formula and e2fsprogs, and starts the gateway with brew services:

defenseclaw sandbox setup --install-openshell

Config editor

Setup → Config Editor has an OpenShell Sandboxes section for the openshell: keys. Keys an administrator constrains through openshell.admin are read-only and say why ("read-only: blocked by your organization's DefenseClaw policy" with the reason), following the same rules as the TUI's config editor. In a managed_enterprise install the whole section is read-only.