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Managing Apps

Monitor status, view logs, access the terminal, and control your installed apps.

Viewing Installed Apps

Your installed apps appear in the Lawn menu bar dropdown and in the main window. You can also click View in Finder to see the app's data on disk.

Finder may show the app size as ~500 GB — this is because Lawn uses sparse files that don't actually take up that space. The correct size is shown under on disk in the Finder info panel.

Each app shows its current status:

  • Running — The app is active and accessible
  • Stopped — The app is installed but not running
  • Starting — The app is booting up
  • Error — Something went wrong

Starting and Stopping

Click an installed app to open its detail view, then use the control buttons to:

  • Start — Boot the app and all its containers
  • Stop — Gracefully shut down the app

You can also start and stop apps directly from the menu bar dropdown.

Viewing Logs

The detail view includes a Logs tab that shows real-time output from your app's containers. Use logs to troubleshoot issues or verify that an app started correctly.

  • Logs stream in real time when the app is running
  • You can scroll back through log history
  • Multi-component apps (for example, apps that use a database) show logs from all containers

Using the Terminal

The detail view also includes a Terminal tab that gives you an interactive shell inside the app's container. This is useful for advanced troubleshooting, but most users won't need it.

Monitoring Resources

The detail view shows live resource metrics for each app:

  • CPU usage
  • Memory usage
  • Disk usage

These help you understand how much of your Mac's resources each app is using.

Removing an App

To remove an installed app:

  1. Open the app's detail view
  2. Click the menu button and select Remove
  3. Choose whether to keep or delete the app's data

If you keep the data, you can reinstall the app later and pick up where you left off. If you delete the data, it's gone permanently.

Auto-Start

You can configure apps to start automatically when Lawn launches. Toggle this in the app's detail view. This is useful for apps you want running all the time, like a password manager or ad blocker.