The menu bar agent, explained

What the icon states mean and what each menu item does: Ping Now, Prevent Sleep, Ghost mode, and Hyper Mode.

The agent lives in your Mac's menu bar and is the source of truth for your online status.

The icon shows normal monitoring, switches to a small ghost while Ghost mode is on, and shows fast-forward chevrons inside the bubble for Hyper Mode: solid while it is active, outline while a window is scheduled. The menu’s status line always shows the last successful check-in time.

Four menu bar icon states: monitoring, ghost mode, Hyper Mode scheduled with outline chevrons, and Hyper Mode active with solid chevrons
The four icon states at a glance.

Menu items:

  • Ping Now: sends an immediate check-in instead of waiting for the 5-minute cycle. Useful right after reconnecting.
  • Prevent Sleep: keeps the Mac awake while idle, reducing sleep-related false alarms. macOS still sleeps on lid close when on battery; that is an operating system rule.
  • Ghost mode: pause all alerting from the menu: indefinitely, for preset hours, or a custom duration.
  • Hyper Mode: arm zero-delay alerting for a high-stakes block of time, now or scheduled ahead, in Triggered or Extra flavor. The Hyper Mode article covers what each flavor does.
The agent's menu bar menu: status line, Ping Now, Diagnostics, Prevent Sleep, Ghost mode, and Hyper Mode
The agent's menu, illustrated.

After an outage, the agent also shows a desktop notification on the first check-in back, summarizing what happened while you were dark. Settings changes made in the web app reach the agent within one ping cycle, about 5 minutes.