A tiny macOS menu bar app that tells you — at a glance — whether DeepSeek is in peak or off-peak pricing, and how much is left in your API balance.
Idle (off-peak) pricing is half the peak price, so "are we in peak hours right now?" is a question worth answering without opening a browser tab. DeepSeek Status answers it with a whale.
- 🔵 Peak hours — a bright DeepSeek-blue whale, head up, bubbles trailing behind its tail.
- 😴 Off-peak hours — a pale, sleepy whale lying on its side, with little
zs floating above it.
Click the whale to open a panel with the current period, the price multiplier, a live countdown to the next switch, a monthly pricing calendar, a weekly schedule heat map, and — once you paste an API key — the balance left on your DeepSeek account. Optionally it can also show the countdown directly next to the menu bar icon.
Peak hours (×1.0) |
Off-peak hours (×0.5) |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Current English build in peak preview mode. | Current English build in off-peak preview mode. |
The new schedule views:
| Monthly calendar | Weekly hours |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Public holidays and all-day off-peak dates at a glance. | The familiar 7×24 peak and off-peak grid. |
Menu bar in both states and on different menu bar backgrounds:
| Peak | Off-peak | |
|---|---|---|
| Dark menu bar |  |
 |
| Translucent / light menu bar |  |
 |
Off-peak pricing is half of peak pricing. Peak hours are Monday–Friday 09:00–12:00 and 14:00–18:00, Beijing time. Everything else is off-peak.
| Time (Beijing) | Period | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Mon–Fri 09:00–12:00 | Peak | 100% |
| Mon–Fri 12:00–14:00 | Off-peak | 50% |
| Mon–Fri 14:00–18:00 | Peak | 100% |
| Mon–Fri 18:00–09:00 (next day) | Off-peak | 50% |
| Saturday and Sunday, all day | Off-peak | 50% |
| Chinese public holidays, all day | Off-peak | 50% |
Details:
- Ranges are half-open: 12:00 sharp is already off-peak, 18:00 sharp is already off-peak, and 09:00 sharp is already peak.
- The decision is always made in Beijing time (
Asia/Shanghai, UTC+8, no daylight saving), regardless of your Mac's time zone. If your Mac is in a different time zone, the panel says so. - Weekend make-up workdays remain off-peak all day. Weekdays included in the official Chinese holiday schedule are also off-peak all day.
- macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later.
- Apple Silicon or Intel. The app is developed and tested on Apple Silicon (arm64); there is no architecture-specific code.
Requires Xcode 16 or later — the project uses the file-system-synchronized group format
(objectVersion = 77). The Command Line Tools alone are enough for Tools/build.sh.
Developed with Xcode 27; the deployment target is macOS 14.0.
git clone <this repository>
cd DeepSeekStatus
./Tools/build.sh run # build (Debug) and launchOther options:
./Tools/build.sh # Debug build only
./Tools/build.sh release # Release buildThe product lands in Build/DerivedData/Build/Products/<configuration>/DeepSeekStatus.app.
Or just open DeepSeekStatus.xcodeproj in Xcode, select the DeepSeekStatus scheme and press ⌘R.
- Grab the newest
DeepSeekStatus-<version>.zipfrom the Releases page. The binary is universal — Apple Silicon and Intel — and needs macOS 14.0 or later. - Unzip it and drag
DeepSeekStatus.appinto/Applications. - The app is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it launches without a Gatekeeper prompt — no quarantine workaround needed.
Either way the app has no Dock icon — look for the whale in the menu bar, right of the menu bar extras.
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Left-click the whale | Open / close the details panel |
| Right-click the whale | Quick menu: preview peak, preview off-peak, follow live time, show countdown in the menu bar, quit |
| Account balance | Appears in the panel once an API key is saved. Refresh queries it immediately; the time of the last successful refresh sits next to the button |
| Enter / Change API Key | Opens the key field in the panel. The key is stored in the macOS Keychain; Remove deletes it |
| Preview picker in the panel | Force the app to display peak or off-peak so you can see both looks at any time. It only changes what is drawn, never the real pricing |
| Show countdown in the menu bar | Adds an HH:MM:SS countdown next to the whale (off by default) |
| Launch at login | Registers the app as a login item via SMAppService (off by default) |
| Auto-check for updates | Sparkle checks the appcast in the background (on by default). Check Now in the panel, or Check for Updates… in the right-click menu, runs a check immediately |
| Quit | Quits the app |
The panel contains:
- the current period and its price multiplier (
×1.0/×0.5); - a "current unit price" comparison bar;
- the countdown to the next switch, plus how far through the current block you are;
- the account balance once an API key is saved — total, plus the granted / topped-up split, a Refresh button and the time of the last successful refresh;
- a monthly pricing calendar for planning ahead, switchable to a 7×24 weekly heat map;
- the toggles above, a preview picker, and the update controls.
The panel closes when you click anywhere outside it, press Esc, or click the whale again.
The pricing panel needs no account or API key. The app talks to the network in three narrowly scoped places:
- Balance (opt-in) — if you save a DeepSeek API key, the app calls
GET https://api.deepseek.com/user/balanceon launch, every 5 minutes, and when the panel opens or the Mac wakes with stale data. Your key is sent only in theAuthorizationheader of that one request. With no key saved, no request is ever made. - Updates — Sparkle reads the appcast from this repository's latest GitHub release (daily by default, switchable off in the panel).
- Holiday calendar — at most once per day, the app anonymously checks Apple’s public China holiday calendar. It sends no API key, device-calendar data or other user information, and uses bundled/cached data while offline.
There is no analytics and no telemetry. The API key lives in your macOS Keychain — the entry is encrypted by the system and readable after first unlock — never in a plain-text preferences file, and Remove in the panel deletes it. It is deliberately not wrapped in a second layer of home-made encryption: the key to that would have to sit in the same Keychain anyway, which buys nothing. The app also stores the normalized holiday cache and the optional login item registration.
Does it call the DeepSeek API or need an API key?
Only if you want the balance. Pricing works with no key: it reads the local clock and the public
holiday schedule. If you paste a key into the panel, the app stores it in the Keychain and
calls GET /user/balance to show what is left. That is the only DeepSeek endpoint it ever calls, and
the balance is account-wide: every key of an account returns the same numbers.
Where is the API key stored, and how do I delete it?
In the macOS Keychain, as a generic password scoped to this app
(com.parussoft.DeepSeekStatus.deepseek). It is never written to UserDefaults or any plain file, and
it is not encrypted a second time by the app itself — see Privacy for why. Remove in
the panel's key editor deletes it.
My key expired. Can I still replace it? Yes, and that case is handled explicitly: a failed refresh always offers Change API Key, and an expired key is reported as "The API key is invalid or expired. Replace it?". A working key can be replaced too, from the small key button next to the refresh time.
Which time zone is used?
Beijing time (Asia/Shanghai, UTC+8, no DST) always, no matter where your Mac is. This is
deliberate: the pricing schedule is defined in Beijing time.
Are Chinese public holidays handled? Yes. DeepSeek Status downloads Apple’s public China holiday calendar directly, without reading or modifying your Calendar app and without requesting calendar permission. Weekday holidays and weekend make-up workdays are shown in the monthly pricing calendar.
Why is the menu bar whale not animated?
On purpose. NSStatusItem continuously re-snapshots any custom view placed in it, which costs
20–30% CPU even with no animation at all. A static bitmap drawn once into button.image keeps idle
CPU at ~0%. The aquarium in the panel is animated, but it only runs while the panel is open.
See Docs/DEVELOPMENT.md for the measurements.
Why does the whale change color between dark and light menu bars? The menu bar is translucent, so its backdrop depends on the wallpaper. A single color cannot have enough contrast on both, so the app picks the palette per appearance: light blue on a dark menu bar, brand blue on a light one.
Which languages does the UI support?
English (the default) and Simplified Chinese. The interface follows the language chosen for the app in
System Settings → General → Language & Region → Applications; the pricing schedule itself is always
computed in Beijing time. All UI strings live in a single String Catalog
(DeepSeekStatus/Localizable.xcstrings), so adding another language is just another column there.
How do updates work?
The app ships Sparkle 2 and reads the appcast at
releases/latest/download/appcast.xml. Downloads are signed with an EdDSA key and verified before
anything is installed, and every update is opt-in. Background checks are on by default (one per day)
and can be turned off in the panel. Maintainers publish with ./Tools/release.sh --upload.
Does the countdown update while the Mac is asleep? The app recomputes on wake, on system clock changes, and at midnight, so it is correct as soon as the machine is back.
- The whale is DeepSeek's own logo, embedded as a vector path — there are no image assets.
A small SVG path parser (
M/L/H/V/C/S/Q/T/A/Z, including elliptical arcs converted to cubic Béziers) parses it at runtime, so it stays sharp at any size and can be recolored freely. - The menu bar icon is rasterized once into a 46×22
NSImageand handed toNSStatusItem.button.image. - The panel is a self-positioned
NSPanel(notNSPopover), so it can never be pushed off-screen. - The schedule is computed from a fixed
Asia/Shanghaicalendar with half-open intervals and the cached Chinese public-holiday schedule; the app refreshes on clock changes, day changes and wake. - The balance is one
GET /user/balancecall carrying the key from the Keychain. Responses carry a token, so a reply that arrives after you have already saved a different key is discarded instead of overwriting the new key's state.
Architecture, tooling, measurements and the pitfalls found along the way are documented in Docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.
MIT © 2026 Zhao Xin
The whale is the official DeepSeek mark, taken from the Simple Icons collection (CC0). "DeepSeek" and its logo belong to their owner. This project is an unofficial utility and is not affiliated with or endorsed by DeepSeek.