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Swifka

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Monitoring & Observability

 About Swifka

A native macOS Kafka monitor. Read-only by design.

Platforms

Web Self-hosted macOS iOS

Languages

Swift

Links

Website Source Code

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Swifka

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Swifka

Swifka

A native macOS Kafka monitor. Read-only by design.


Latest Release Total Downloads
Swift macOS License

Why Swifka exists: Every existing Kafka client is either Java-based (Offset Explorer, Conduktor) or web-based (AKHQ, Kafdrop, Redpanda Console) — and every single one of them tries to be a full Kafka Swiss Army knife. None of them feel at home on macOS, and none of them nail "lightweight, safe, read-only monitoring."

Tool Stack Problem
Offset Explorer Java (Swing) Feature-rich but bloated and dated
Conduktor Java (JavaFX) Pivoted to SaaS, heavy
AKHQ / Kafdrop Java (Web) Requires deployment, full admin scope
Redpanda Console Go + React (Web) Web-based, full admin capabilities
kcat CLI Powerful but raw

Swifka fills the gap: a native macOS client built for monitoring only — safe to point at production, with zero risk of accidental writes. The teams that adopt Swifka are the ones that want a tool they can hand to any engineer, including junior developers and on-call rotations, without worrying about accidental production damage.

Swifka Screenshots

Install

brew install --cask ender-wang/tap/swifka

Or download the latest .dmg from Releases.

Features

Cluster & Connection

  • Connect to any Kafka-compatible cluster (Kafka, Redpanda, etc.)
  • Multi-cluster management with pin, clone, drag-to-reorder, and keyboard navigation
  • Cluster backup & restore (timestamped .zip export/import)
  • Keychain-secured credentials

Topics & Messages

  • Browse topics, partitions, and messages with detailed metadata
  • Message decoding: UTF-8, Hex, Base64, Protobuf (import .proto files), Avro, JSON pretty-print
  • Schema Registry integration — auto-decode Confluent wire format messages (Protobuf, Avro, JSON)
  • Search messages by keyword, regex, or JSON path (e.g., user.email:john@) with time range filter

Monitoring & Charts

  • Consumer group lag monitoring with per-partition breakdown
  • Real-time trend charts: throughput, lag, ISR health (Live & History modes)
  • Per-consumer member lag investigation
  • Broker health dashboard with leader distribution
  • SQL-downsampled historical data with configurable retention

Alerts & Notifications

  • Configurable alert rules: ISR health, cluster lag, broker latency, broker offline
  • Alert history with resolution tracking and detail panel
  • macOS desktop notifications

Quality of Life

  • Menu bar resident mode
  • Excel (.xlsx) chart data export
  • Manual + timed refresh (5s / 10s / 30s / 60s) with circuit breaker
  • Dark mode, compact/regular/large row density
  • English + Simplified Chinese (JSON-based, easy to contribute)
  • In-app auto-update (GitHub Releases — check, download, verify, install, restart)
  • Read-only by design — zero risk of accidental writes to production

Roadmap

Milestone Focus Status
1 MVP Core — connections, topics, messages, consumer groups, brokers ✅
2 Dashboards & Visualization — charts, alerts, historical data, SQLite ✅
3 Animations & Polish — chart animations, cluster manager, menu bar ✅
4 Advanced Monitoring & Search — Protobuf/Avro decode, regex/JSON path search ✅
5 Release Polish — Schema Registry, alert rules, accessibility, logging, in-app auto-update → 1.0.0 ✅

Contributing

Requirements: macOS 15.7+, Xcode 16.2+, Homebrew

brew install swiftformat

Code style is enforced by SwiftFormat via a build phase — rules are in .swiftformat at the project root.

Architecture

Data Flow

graph TD
    V["SwiftUI Views"] -->|"observe"| A["AppState (@Observable)"]
    A -->|"user actions"| V
    R["RefreshManager"] -->|"periodic fetch"| A
    A -->|"async calls"| K["KafkaService (actor)"]
    K -->|"C FFI · librdkafka"| C["Kafka / Redpanda"]
    A -->|"decode"| D["MessageDeserializer"]
    D -.->|"schema lookup"| S["SchemaRegistryClient"]
    S -->|"HTTP"| SR["Schema Registry"]
    A -->|"check · download · install"| U["UpdateChecker / Installer"]
    U -->|"GitHub API"| GH["GitHub Releases"]
    A <-->|"metrics"| DB[("SQLite")]
    A <-->|"configs"| CS["JSON + Keychain"]

Source Tree

Swifka/
├── App/                            # Entry point + global state
│   ├── SwifkaApp.swift             #   @main, window groups, menu commands
│   └── AppState.swift              #   @Observable — single source of truth for all UI
├── ContentView.swift               # NavigationSplitView shell (sidebar → detail router)
│
├── Core/                           # Business logic — no SwiftUI imports
│   ├── Kafka/
│   │   ├── KafkaService.swift      #   actor — librdkafka C FFI (metadata, consume, watermarks)
│   │   ├── Models.swift            #   TopicInfo, BrokerInfo, ConsumerGroupInfo, etc.
│   │   ├── MetricStore.swift       #   In-memory snapshots for live trend charts
│   │   └── MetricModels.swift      #   MetricSnapshot, LagSnapshot value types
│   ├── Deserialization/
│   │   ├── MessageDeserializer.swift      # Format router (UTF-8, Hex, Base64, Proto, Avro, JSON)
│   │   ├── ProtobufDeserializer.swift     # .proto file import + wire-format decode
│   │   └── AvroDecoder.swift              # Avro binary decoder (all types)
│   ├── SchemaRegistry/
│   │   ├── SchemaRegistryClient.swift     # HTTP — subjects, versions, schema fetch
│   │   └── ConfluentWireFormat.swift      # Magic byte 0x00 + 4-byte schema ID extraction
│   ├── Updates/
│   │   ├── UpdateChecker.swift      #   actor — GitHub Releases API, version comparison
│   │   ├── UpdateDownloader.swift   #   URLSession delegate with progress tracking
│   │   ├── UpdateInstaller.swift    #   9-phase DMG install pipeline + restart
│   │   ├── UpdateModels.swift       #   GitHubRelease, UpdateStatus, UpdateProgress, UpdateError
│   │   └── ChecksumVerifier.swift   #   SHA256 verification via CryptoKit
│   ├── Storage/
│   │   ├── ConfigStore.swift       #   Cluster configs persisted as JSON files
│   │   ├── MetricDatabase.swift    #   SQLite — historical metrics, alerts, retention
│   │   └── BackupManager.swift     #   Cluster export/import (.zip archives)
│   └── Security/
│       └── KeychainManager.swift   #   macOS Keychain for passwords and SASL credentials
│
├── Features/                       # One directory per sidebar page
│   ├── Clusters/                   #   Cluster list — add, edit, pin, clone, connect
│   ├── Connection/                 #   Dashboard overview + cluster picker
│   ├── Topics/                     #   Topic list with expandable partition detail
│   ├── Messages/                   #   Message browser — search, filter, decode
│   ├── Monitor/                    #   Consumer groups table + broker health cards
│   ├── Trends/                     #   Throughput, ISR, ping charts (Live + History)
│   ├── Lag/                        #   Consumer lag investigation (group/topic/partition/member)
│   ├── SchemaRegistry/             #   Schema browser — subjects, versions, schema viewer
│   └── Settings/                   #   Preferences — refresh, density, language, alerts, auto-update, about
│
├── Shared/
│   ├── Components/                 # Reusable views — MenuBarView, ConnectionStatusBadge
│   └── Utils/                      # L10n, RefreshManager, Log, ChartExporter, XLSXWriter
│
└── Resources/
    └── Locales/                    # en.json, zh-Hans.json (custom JSON-based i18n)

Key Patterns

Pattern Detail
Actor isolation KafkaService is a Swift actor. Blocking librdkafka C calls run on a dedicated DispatchQueue via withCheckedThrowingContinuation, keeping the actor executor free for cancellation
@Observable AppState uses the @Observable macro. Views read properties directly — no @Published or objectWillChange needed
MainActor by default Project sets SWIFT_DEFAULT_ACTOR_ISOLATION = MainActor. All types are @MainActor unless explicitly opted out (KafkaService, model structs)
Read-only KafkaService only exposes read methods — no produce, delete, or admin operations exist in the codebase
JSON i18n L10n loads locale JSON at runtime. Access: l10n["key"] or l10n.t("key", arg1, arg2) for interpolation
DMG auto-update UpdateChecker (actor) queries GitHub Releases API. UpdateInstaller runs a 9-phase pipeline: mount DMG → verify bundle ID → copy + strip quarantine → replace with backup → restart via detached script

Localization

Swifka uses a custom JSON-based i18n system. Currently supported:

Language File Status
English Resources/Locales/en.json ✅
Simplified Chinese Resources/Locales/zh-Hans.json ✅

Contributing a Translation

  1. Copy Resources/Locales/en.json
  2. Rename to your language code (e.g. ja.json, ko.json, fr.json, de.json)
  3. Translate the values (keep the keys as-is)
  4. Submit a PR

No code changes needed — the app picks up new locale files automatically.

License

Swifka is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

Acknowledgments

Swifka is built on top of these open-source projects:

Project License Description
swift-kafka-client Apache-2.0 SSWG-maintained Swift Kafka client
librdkafka BSD-2-Clause C library for Kafka protocol, used directly for metadata and watermark APIs
SQLite.swift MIT Type-safe SQLite wrapper for metrics storage
SwiftProtobuf Apache-2.0 Protocol Buffers runtime for message decoding
SwiftFormat MIT Code formatting tool used in the build pipeline

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