Paddock

A menu bar app that runs the one shared ollama server on this Mac: it turns the server on and off, shows at a glance whether it is running and who started it, and always starts it local-only with ollama's cloud features off.

Several Mac utilities (Gijiroku, Taiyaku) use a language model through ollama. They share one set of models in ~/.ollama/models and one server, and none of them starts or stops that server. Paddock is the only thing that does. It exists because a server started by hand and forgotten keeps running, and keeps talking to ollama.com, for days without anyone noticing.

Requirements: macOS 26 on Apple silicon, and Ollama installed separately (for example brew install ollama). Ollama is a separate program under its own licence (MIT); Paddock starts and stops it but does not include it.

The contract with other apps

• The server is http://127.0.0.1:11434.
• Apps only connect to it. They never start or stop it.
• When an app cannot connect, it tells the user to turn the server on in Paddock.

Features

• On and off. Starts ollama serve with OLLAMA_HOST=127.0.0.1:11434 (nothing outside this Mac can connect) and OLLAMA_NO_CLOUD=1, and stops it again. Every other inherited OLLAMA_* variable is dropped, so nothing set elsewhere (for example with launchctl setenv) can widen access.

• State at a glance. The menu bar icon is a paddock fence with a mark to its right:

  Icon	Meaning
  fence alone, dimmed	off
  fence and a filled dot	on, started by Paddock
  fence and !	on, but started outside Paddock (for example ollama serve in Terminal); its cloud and network settings cannot be vouched for
  fence and a ring	starting or stopping
  fence struck through, dimmed	ollama is not installed

  The menu says the same in words, with the time the server started, so a server left running for days shows up.

• Stopping a server started elsewhere asks first. Paddock only ever stops a process named ollama; if something else holds the port, the menu says which process it is and offers nothing to stop.

• The address, with a click to copy it.

• The log. Everything the server prints goes to ~/Library/Logs/Paddock/ollama-serve-<date>-<time>.log, one file per start. The five newest files are kept whole; older ones are deleted whole. The menu shows the last 500 lines in a window that follows new output, or reveals the file in Finder.

• Quitting Paddock stops the server it started. The Quit item says so ("Quit Paddock and Stop Server"), and like the Turn Off item it warns that apps using the server lose their connection. The same happens at logout and when Paddock receives SIGTERM. A server started outside Paddock is left running.

• Settings

  • Keep Models Loaded: how long a model stays in memory after its last request (OLLAMA_KEEP_ALIVE): unload immediately, 1, 5 (ollama's default) or 30 minutes. Used from the next server start; Paddock does not restart a running server by itself, because that would cut off the apps using it. A request's own keep_alive still wins, so an app can always unload a model at once with "keep_alive": 0.
  • Turn On Server When Paddock Opens: off by default. Paddock opens at login, so this is how the server comes on at login.
  • Open Paddock at Login: on by default once Paddock runs from /Applications.

Paddock does not download, delete, or list models (use ollama pull and ollama rm), show what is loaded, offer a chat, or install ollama. If ollama is missing, it says so and nothing more.

Network

What Paddock guarantees by construction:

• Paddock itself only opens TCP connections to 127.0.0.1:11434, to see whether something is listening. It sends no request, so the server logs nothing. It talks to nothing else.
• The server it starts gets OLLAMA_HOST=127.0.0.1:11434 and OLLAMA_NO_CLOUD=1. The server's own log then says Listening on 127.0.0.1:11434 and Ollama cloud disabled: true.

What has been observed: in more than seven hours of recorded ordinary use, a server started this way connected to nothing but 127.0.0.1, and none of the seven model-recommendation refreshes that came due then or in the following week touched its cache. The method, the numbers and their limits are in docs/network-verification.md.

How Paddock keeps track

It reacts to events wherever macOS offers one and polls only where it does not:

Situation	How Paddock notices a change
Server started by Paddock	the process exit is reported by the system
ollama started elsewhere	the kernel reports that process's exit (kqueue)
Nothing listening, or a listener that is not ollama	a connection attempt to 127.0.0.1:11434 every 10 s
Starting	a connection attempt every 0.25 s until the server listens (at most 60 s)
Opening the menu, waking from sleep	checked at once

macOS offers no notification when some other program starts listening on a port, so the 10-second check while the server is off is the one timer that runs at idle. It is a single refused connection on the loopback address.

If Paddock is force-quit or crashes, the server it started keeps running. Paddock records the server's process ID and start time, and when it opens again it recognises that server as its own, instead of as one started elsewhere.

Idle cost

Measured on 2026-09-23 on an Apple M1 Pro with 32 GB, macOS 26.6, over 10 minutes each, without touching the menu.

State	Paddock CPU time	Paddock memory (footprint / RSS)
Server off: the 10-second check runs	0.20 s in 10 min (0.03 %)	10 MB / 42 MB
Server on, started by Paddock: no timer	0.21 s in 10 min (0.03 %)	16 MB / 59 MB
For comparison, ollama serve itself with no model loaded	0.02 s in 10 min	12 MB / 31 MB

top counted no idle wake-ups for Paddock in either period. The footprint is what Activity Monitor shows as Memory; RSS also counts shared system libraries. The second row is higher because the menu had been opened once, which builds it; the first row is before any opening. The 10-second check costs too little to separate from AppKit's own background work. A loaded model is the server's cost, not Paddock's: gemma3:4b adds a llama-server process of about 3 GB (4.4 GB RSS with a 32k context) until the keep-alive time runs out.

Permissions

Paddock asks for none of the privacy permissions (no Accessibility, Input Monitoring, Screen Recording, microphone or files). The first time it opens from Applications it adds itself to Login Items, so its icon is there after every login; turn that off in its menu or in System Settings → General → Login Items. See PRIVACY.md.

Install

1. Download Paddock-<version>.dmg and Paddock-<version>.dmg.sha256 from the Releases page.

2. Optionally, check the download. In the folder that holds both files, this prints OK:

   shasum -a 256 -c Paddock-<version>.dmg.sha256

3. Open the dmg and drag Paddock.app onto the Applications folder next to it.

4. Open Paddock from Applications. It is signed but not notarized, so the first time macOS refuses to open it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

Upgrading from a pre-release build

Builds made before the first release used the bundle identifier local.paddock. The first launch of a newer build copies their settings over and registers its own login item, so System Settings → General → Login Items then lists Paddock.app twice and cannot tell you which is which. Remove both with −, then choose Open Paddock at Login in Paddock's menu again. defaults delete local.paddock removes the old settings.

Build

Requires Xcode (the build uses swiftc, xcstringstool and swift-format from it). There is no Xcode project on purpose: build.sh is the whole build definition.

./build.sh            # builds ./Paddock.app, signed with the shared "Mac Utilities Code Signing" certificate
./build.sh --install  # also copies it to /Applications, quitting (and so stopping) a running copy first
./build.sh --release  # also packs dist/Paddock-<version>.dmg and its SHA-256 for a GitHub release

Run it from /Applications, so that the login item points at a stable place. Without the "Mac Utilities Code Signing" certificate in the keychain the build is signed ad hoc, with a warning.

Uninstall

1. Quit Paddock from its menu. This stops the server it started.

2. Remove it from System Settings → General → Login Items if it is listed, and delete /Applications/Paddock.app.

3. Delete its logs and settings:

   rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/Paddock
   defaults delete dev.kosuke.paddock

ollama and its models in ~/.ollama are not Paddock's and are left alone.

Quality checks

./tests/run.sh   # swift-format lint, then the tests
./build.sh       # also syncs the String Catalog and fails if a string lacks its Japanese translation

The tests drive the server controller against a fake ollama on ports 11490–11499, never the real server: start and stop, a server that exits while starting, one that never listens, one that ignores SIGTERM, an ollama started elsewhere, a port held by something else, taking a server back after a crash, and a missing ollama.

Architecture

• Sources/Core/ (Foundation only, covered by the tests)
  • ServerController.swift: the state machine; starts, stops, watches, and recognises servers.
  • ServerEnvironment.swift: the server's environment, the keep-alive presets, where ollama is looked for.
  • ProcessInspector.swift: process details and the listener of a port, read from the kernel (libproc).
  • PortProbe.swift: the loopback connection check.
  • LogStore.swift: log files, their rotation, and reading the last lines.
  • SettingsMigration.swift: carries settings over from the pre-release bundle identifier.
• Sources/App/ (AppKit)
  • AppDelegate.swift: launch, SIGTERM, wake, and stopping the server before quitting.
  • StatusMenu.swift: the menu bar item, the menu, and all user-facing text about the server.
  • StatusHeaderView.swift: the coloured state line at the top of the menu.
  • StatusIcon.swift: the fence icons.
  • LogWindowController.swift: the log window.
  • Preferences.swift: settings and the login item.
• Resources/: Info.plist, the String Catalog (English, Japanese), the app icon.
• tools/: the icon generator and the String Catalog check.

License

MIT. Copyright (c) 2026 Kosuke Satake. See LICENSE and, for what Paddock uses but does not include, THIRD_PARTY.md.

This app was built with the help of Claude (Anthropic) through Claude Code; design, review and testing are by Kosuke Satake. Anthropic does not endorse this app.