Tips & Settings

Organizing

• Make one workspace per product or client, and add each repository as a project.
• Make a view per task, for example one for the frontend with its browser and one for the API with an agent.
• Add a shared API service to every view that needs it. It runs once.
• Use Focus (⌥1) to collect views from several workspaces in one place.
• Use Requires in Edit Service so a website starts its API first.

Notifications

• A service that crashes or fails sends a macOS notification. Clicking it opens the service. If 3 or more services fail within 6 seconds, you get one "Multiple Processes Stopped" notification instead.
• Log patterns notify you when a line matches (Settings → Log Patterns, or the Patterns tab of Edit Service).
• Claude Code sessions notify you when they wait for input (Settings → Notifications → "When an agent is idle").
• Settings → General → "Notify when a process crashes" turns crash notifications on and off.

Process Manager

Press ⇧⌘M, choose Process Manager in the app menu, or click the CPU and memory numbers in the status bar. The window lists the processes Highwind started, with CPU, memory, PID, type, elapsed time and charts. It marks suspected orphans, such as agent processes left behind by a crash, and lets you terminate them. Right-click the status bar numbers to show them as text, gauges or sparklines.

Restarting Highwind

When Highwind launches it restores which services were running, agent sessions, browser tabs, zoom levels and sidebar tabs. Services start again view by view, starting with the visible view. Highwind → Restart Highwind quits and reopens the app in one step.

Git Sync

Turn on "Version configuration with Git" in Settings → Sync. Highwind commits configuration changes to a git repository in ~/.highwind a few seconds after you make them. Add a remote to push and pull it, which happens twice a day and on launch or wake when a sync was missed. Sync Now runs one right away. Use this to keep the same setup on several Macs.

Pomodoro timer

The status bar has a Pomodoro timer. Click it to start, pause, skip or reset. Focus, short break and long break lengths, the rounds before a long break, and the break screen are set in Settings → General → Pomodoro. The full-window break screen can be turned off there.

Statistics

The Statistics tab of the Dashboard drawer (⌘B) shows active time, days used, streak, a daily activity chart, a heatmap, the operations you ran, Pomodoro totals, and which agents and workspaces you use most. The data is stored locally in ~/.highwind/metrics.

Appearance

Settings → Appearance has seven themes: Graphite (default), Indigo, Midnight, Slate, Ocean, Forest and Walnut. Each comes with an accent color, and you can pick a different one from the same page. The page also sets the font and size for agent terminals, quick command terminals and service logs.

Smaller things

• Collapse panes you only need to glance at. Their links and quick commands still show on hover.
• Put a browser next to the service that serves it. It waits for the server and reloads after restarts.
• Voice input also types into browser text fields: click the field, then press ⌥.
• Settings → General → Behavior → "Focus agent input after switching layouts" puts the cursor in the agent when you switch views with ⌘1 to ⌘9.
• Settings → Advanced → Backup exports or imports all configuration as one JSON file.