Notes from the menu bar.
Short, practical guides on localhost ports, killing stuck processes, and tunneling on macOS — written for developers who'd rather get back to coding.
How to find a port on Mac Terminal (lsof, netstat)
The terminal commands that map a port back to the process behind it on macOS — lsof, netstat, and a one-click menu-bar view. Plus the gotchas that bite first-time Mac users.
Fix "port already in use" (EADDRINUSE) on macOS
Why ports get stuck after a crash, the safe way to free them, and why kill -9 is almost never the first move. Worked examples for Node, Vite, Rails, and Docker.
Free ngrok alternatives for localhost tunneling
A side-by-side look at Cloudflare Tunnel, localhost.run, bore, and tailscale-funnel — what each does well, what it costs, and when to pick which for sharing a local dev server.