Lawn
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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
  • Reconnecting — Lawn is reconnecting to an app that was already running
  • 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.

Updating an app

Choose Updates below Discover in the sidebar to see available updates and follow their progress. Click Update on an app, review the versions, and confirm. Use Update All to review all available updates together. A running app stops during the update and starts again afterward. A stopped app stays stopped.

You can also open an available update from the app's details. To update selected apps together, select them in the sidebar with Command-click or Shift-click, then right-click and choose Update….

Lawn updates up to three apps at a time. Apps waiting for data migrations do not count toward this limit. Other updates show Queued… and start automatically.

To stop an update from the app's details, hover over its progress and click Stop update.

If you need to undo the update, restore the snapshot taken before it.

Recovering an app that will not start

Lawn tries starting an app once. If startup fails, Lawn stops that attempt and shows the error. Choose Recovery Options beside the error to retry starting the app, update it when a newer version is available, reinstall it, or restore a snapshot if one is available. If stopping the failed attempt also fails, use Stop or Force Stop before starting it again.

If an update is available, choose Review update… in Recovery Options to inspect the newer version, then click Update. Recovery Options closes. Follow progress in the app's details, then click Start to try the new version.

Choose Reinstall app and review the confirmation. Lawn saves a recovery snapshot, reinstalls the same app version while keeping your data and settings, then tries starting it again.

Open Manage Snapshots to restore the state from before reinstallation. See restoring a snapshot.

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.

Snapshots

Take a snapshot before an experiment so you can return to it later. You can also use a snapshot to make a separate copy of an app. Lawn shows how much storage belongs to the current app, each snapshot, and snapshots that share data.

See Snapshots for taking snapshots, restoring safely, branching history, and understanding snapshot storage.

Removing an App

To delete an installed app:

  1. Open the app's detail view
  2. Click the menu button and select Delete
  3. Confirm the deletion

This permanently deletes the app and all associated data, including snapshots. This cannot be undone.

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.

Auto-Start makes one attempt when Lawn opens. A failed attempt waits for you to retry; it does not keep restarting in the background.

Browsing the Catalog

Search, explore categories, and install apps from the Lawn catalog.

Snapshots

Save an app before a change, return to it later, or make a separate copy.