Show HN: Port Kill – A lightweight macOS status bar development port monitor
28 comments
·August 24, 2025faangguyindia
On macOS i've this in my zshrc file:
`killport() { kill -9 $(lsof -t -i :$1 -sTCP:LISTEN) }`
i use it like killport 8000
porridgeraisin
Yeah, I have a function `whoseport` which is just your subcommand. I usually manually type kill or whatever I want with `$(whoseport 3000)`
lexokoh
Nice. I have this too. I wanted something more visual and expansive.
dsab
What is "development process" ??? What is "business use case" of this tool? Such a big readme and no introduction to why I should be interested in this tool.
lexokoh
It's just a tool I built for myself. There's no business case. It just helps me
hit8run
Which is perfectly fine and a fun thing to do. I personally use the terminal but such a little monitoring tool can be quite fun and we should embrace the fun in doing things more. People over here are so soaked up by the Open Source as a business model VC-Pitch that they can't believe it when someone builds a little hobby tool with no business plan for a multi billion dollar exit. You're doing it right buddy. Don't let these Crypto-SaaS-AI-Bros ruin the fun for you.
motorest
> Such a big readme and no introduction to why I should be interested in this tool.
This.
Why in the hell would anyone want to kill random processes that open a port in the tange 2000-6000? And why is this need so pressing as to require a full blown monitor integrated in a task bar?
Without context, this sounds like a complete random silly project that makes no sense and serves no purpose at all.
bigyabai
Without context, it sounds like something someone vibe-coded and git push-ed up to the internet. Which is fine, but it's just unusually precise and verbose for something that would end up being a shell alias for most developers.
todotask2
The author also posted it on Reddit. He used it for himself, but some people use it even though it’s bad practice.
_def
I'm not looking forward to the near future where it will become harder and harder to distinguish little projects like this from AI generated tools.
userbinator
The README already has a rather repugnant LLM-ish feel to it; lots of lists and verboseness, while saying very little.
Also, this is a perplexing choice (which also serves to illustrate the above point regarding verboseness):
White background with red center: 1-9 processes (some development servers)
White background with orange center: 10+ processes (many development servers)nojs
> Quit: Exits the application
lexokoh
A lot of ReadMe's are generated with AI. Doesn't really mean anything.
userbinator
You're right. A lot of words that don't really mean anything; and that's exactly why you should not do it if you want actual humans to read it.
AbuAssar
the ascii tree in "Project Structure" is a dead giveaway that AI is used in this project
hbbio
Didn't expect to see the FSL for that kind of project :)
The part I'm interested in is the tray_icon crate but I'll look at the package directly https://docs.rs/tray-icon/latest/tray_icon/.
password4321
Interesting idea ("manages development processes running on ports 2000-6000"), and props for hitting the front page though technically this is a "Show HN". Screenshot(s)?
lexokoh
Not sure I can add images here, but if you check the repo, I'll be adding one shortly.
nbbaier
Neat! There's also a raycast extension for this kind of thing for anyone who wants to go that route:
sgt
lsof is a bit heavy, I wouldn't want that running every 5 seconds to be honest.
incanus77
These would be good additions to SwiftBar/BitBar.
npretto
a couple of prompts of claude code gave me this, works well enough, but while I agree that this is sometimes useful, it may indeed better served by a couple of aliases in the terminal ``` #!/bin/bash
# SwiftBar Port Monitor # Monitors processes on TCP ports 2000-6000
# Menu bar title echo " Ports" echo "---"
# Get processes listening on TCP ports 2000-6000 processes=$(lsof -iTCP:2000-6000 -sTCP:LISTEN -n -P 2>/dev/null | awk 'NR>1 {print $2 "|" $1 "|" $9}' | sort -t'|' -k3 -n)
if [ -z "$processes" ]; then echo "No processes found on ports 2000-6000" exit 0 fi
# Process each line while IFS='|' read -r pid name port_info; do if [ -n "$pid" ] && [ -n "$name" ] && [ -n "$port_info" ]; then # Extract port number from format like :3000 port=$(echo "$port_info" | sed 's/.://')
# Menu item with port and process name
echo "[$port] $name | color=blue"
# Submenu items
echo "--Kill (TERM) | shell=kill param1=$pid terminal=false refresh=true"
echo "--Kill Force (KILL) | shell=kill param1=-9 param2=$pid terminal=false refresh=true"
echo "--Process Info | shell=ps param1=-p param2=$pid param3=-o param4=pid,ppid,user,command terminal=true"
echo "-----"
fi# Refresh option echo "---" echo "Refresh | refresh=true
skyzouwdev
[dead]
Ports 2000 - 6000?
I know I am getting old but when did we stop running things on 8xxx? The more 8's the more dev it was. 8000, 8080, 8088, 8888