Jsonita

A tiny menu-bar JSON toolkit for macOS & Windows.
Press ⌘⇧J from any app — format, minify, traverse, unwrap, and AI-fix JSON without leaving your keyboard.

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Jsonita lives in your menu bar and appears the instant you press the global shortcut. Paste JSON, get a formatted result in under 300 ms, switch transforms with one keystroke, and dismiss it just as fast. Everything stays on your machine — the only time anything is sent anywhere is when you explicitly ask AI to repair a broken document.

Local by default · window shows in P95 < 500 ms · steady memory < 80 MB · install < 15 MB.

Features

Feature	What it does
Format	Indent 2 / 4 / tab, sort keys, trailing newline — all configurable
Minify	Collapse to a single line
Tree view	Expand / collapse nodes with type-colored values; read-only
JSON ⇄ String	Escape to a string or parse a string back; round-trips through multiple nesting layers
Nested unwrap	Unwrap multiply-stringified payloads (e.g. Go/proto double-wrap) in one shot, with a hard timeout so it can never hang
AI Auto-Fix	Paste almost-JSON → the AI Fix tab appears → review a diff → Accept. OpenAI-compatible and Anthropic providers, using your own API key
History	Local SQLite, automatic dedupe, star to keep, opens with ⌘Y
Custom shortcut	Rebind the global hotkey with conflict detection
Smart width	The window widens for long lines and collapses for short ones
i18n	English and 简体中文, switchable in Settings

Privacy

• History, settings, window state, and your API key are stored locally — nothing syncs anywhere.
• Your API key is kept in the app data directory with restricted file permissions (no system Keychain).
• Logs never record JSON content, API keys, or AI prompts and responses.
• AI Fix only fires when you click it, and sends only the document you're looking at — nothing until you press Accept.

Install

Download (recommended)

Grab the latest build from GitHub Releases:

• macOS — download the .dmg, open it, and drag Jsonita.app into /Applications. Launch once, then press ⌘⇧J anywhere.
• Windows — download the .exe and run it (per-user install, no admin needed), then press Ctrl⇧J.

v1 is a small beta. macOS builds are unsigned and Windows builds are unsigned — this is noted in each release. Signed macOS builds and a Homebrew cask land in v1.1.

Build from source

Requires Rust ≥ 1.77, Node ≥ 20, pnpm ≥ 9 (plus Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS).

git clone https://github.com/jinhuang712/jsonita.git
cd jsonita
pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev          # dev mode (first build takes a few minutes)

Release builds:

pnpm release:macos:dmg      # macOS .dmg  → release-artifacts/macos-dmg/
pnpm release:macos:app      # macOS .app  → release-artifacts/macos-app/
pnpm release:windows:exe    # Windows NSIS .exe (run on Windows + MSVC)
pnpm release:all            # everything buildable on the current platform

Usage

1. Launch the app. There's no Dock icon — a single-color mark appears in the menu bar.
2. Press ⌘⇧J from any app; the window appears centered without stealing focus.
3. Paste JSON → the formatted result shows within ~300 ms, with ● valid in the status bar.
4. Switch tabs: Format · Minify · Tree · To String.
5. Paste invalid JSON → the AI Fix tab appears → click it → review the diff → Accept.
6. ⌘K clear · ⌘\ single ⇄ split pane · ⌘↵ apply · Esc close.
7. Open Settings (⚙) to change language, theme, the shortcut, and your AI key.

Hiding the window keeps your workspace in memory; quitting ends the process and later restoration uses only saved data. If the global shortcut fails to register, you can still open Jsonita from the menu bar.

System requirements

• macOS 11 Big Sur or later (arm64 / x86_64)
• Windows 10 or later (x86_64; unsigned NSIS installer, beta)

macOS is the primary v1 target; Windows ships as a secondary unsigned beta. Homebrew, an auto-updater, an npm wrapper, and Windows code signing are deferred to v1.1+.

Documentation

Path	Contents
CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md	Product contracts, behavior invariants, and release boundaries (kept byte-identical)
WORKFLOW.md	How docs and implementation stay in sync
design/	Screen hierarchy, visible states, and a low-fidelity flow prototype
docs/	GitHub Pages site source and Superpowers design/plan records

Change history and open work live in the git commit history — there is no separate changelog or backlog file.

Uninstall

# macOS
rm -rf /Applications/Jsonita.app
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Jsonita    # history, settings, window state, API key
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/Jsonita                    # logs

License

MIT © 2026 Jin Huang