The menu bar app

The Butler app lives in your menu bar. Click its icon for a quick menu, or open the dashboard for the full picture. The app is a window onto Butler’s background service — anything you do here you can also do from the CLI, and changes made either way stay in sync.

The app is optional

Butler’s work is done by a background service, not the app. Quitting the app doesn’t stop your sites or services — it just closes the window. Reopen it any time from Applications or Spotlight.

The menu bar icon

Clicking the icon gives you a compact menu for the things you reach for most: starting and stopping services, a quick look at what’s running, opening the dashboard, and quitting the app. It’s the fastest way to pause everything or check status without leaving what you’re doing.

The dashboard

The dashboard is organized into sections down the side:

• Sites — every project you’ve linked or parked, with its address, detected framework, PHP version and HTTPS state. This is where you secure a site, open it in the browser, edit its config, or unlink it. See Linking sites.
• PHP — the PHP versions you have installed. Set the global default, install another version, or reset a version’s php.ini to Butler’s tuned defaults. See PHP versions.
• Node — Node.js versions, managed through fnm, for projects that need a JavaScript toolchain alongside PHP.
• Services — the running processes: your databases, caches, mail catcher, search and so on. Start, stop or restart each one, and jump to its logs. See Databases & services.
• Components — the binaries Butler has downloaded (web servers, database engines, tools). Install new ones or remove ones you no longer use.
• Logs — live output from any Butler-managed process, handy when something isn’t behaving.
• Diagnostics — the same health checks as butler doctor, in a clickable form. Start here when something’s wrong; see Troubleshooting.

Settings

The settings window covers app-level preferences — launching at login, whether the dock icon shows, automatic updates, and the default web server and TLD. The heavier machinery (per-site config, service instances) lives in the dashboard sections above.

Onboarding

The first launch runs a short setup wizard covering permissions, your web server, your PHP version and optional add-ons. It’s described step by step in First run.