Changelog

Sternpost updates itself on macOS

New versions download in the background and install when you quit, or while Sternpost sits idle in the menu bar. Prefer to choose? Turn automatic installs off in Settings → Updates: a badge appears next to Settings when a new version is out, and you can install now, on quit, or skip it. Click the version number in the status bar to see what's new. Sternpost needs to be in your Applications folder for this; if you run it from the disk image or from Downloads, drag it into Applications with Finder first.

Read JSON logs as logs: time, level and message, with the rest one click away

The logs panel recognises the JSON that pino, zap, slog, logrus, Spring (ECS), structlog, nginx and a dozen other loggers write, and shows each line as time, level and message, coloured by level. Click a line to unfold it, or open the inspector beside the log for the whole object as a tree or pretty JSON. Show only warnings and errors, also when searching the entire log; turn any field into a column; teach it your own format in Settings → Logs. Lines that aren't JSON (a banner, a stack trace) stay where they are, and Raw is one click away.

See the open-source software Sternpost is built on

Settings → Licences, under the section list, shows every package the app ships with its licence and full notice text, and opens the Chromium and Electron credits.

The update check sends anonymous version info, and you can turn it off

Once a day, the update check also sends a random install id, the Sternpost version and your platform (for example darwin-arm64), so we can see which versions are still in use. Nothing about you or your clusters. It's on by default. Turn off Send anonymous version info in Settings → Updates and the id is deleted from your machine; turn it on again and you get a new one.

Sternpost no longer downloads spellcheck dictionaries from Google

On Windows and Linux, the built-in spellchecker fetched its dictionaries from Google's servers, the only connection the app made to anything but your clusters and Prometheus. Spellchecking is now off in every window.

Ctrl-click keeps only one namespace or pod on Windows and Linux

In the namespace Scope, the namespace filter and the Pods picker in the logs, Ctrl-click, Ctrl-Enter and Ctrl-Space now keep only that row, as ⌘ does on a Mac. Before, they toggled the row like a plain click.

Scrolled-up logs stay where you are reading

On a busy pod, once the logs panel held its 5,000 lines, the line you had scrolled up to slid out of view as new lines arrived. It now stays put, with wrapping on or off, while you search or inspect a line, and when you toggle Wrap.

Any window can show any cluster and namespace scope

Each window keeps its own scope and cluster, so narrowing one window no longer changes the others. ⌘-click a link to open it in a new window.

A home button at the start of the header

The console is off until you turn it on

Switch it on in Settings → App.

Lists on very large clusters show every resource

On clusters with more than 5,000 pods, the list, search and notifications only saw the first 5,000.

Keep getting Job notifications with the window closed

Sternpost stays in the menu bar or tray and keeps watching. It can also open at login.

Open a cluster in its own window

⌘-click a cluster in the palette or a picker to open it in a window of its own.

Drag the window by its header on macOS

Select several rows and act on them together

Multi-select in resource lists and in the command palette, with bulk delete.

Favourites

Pin lists and resources to the sidebar.

Let an AI agent read your clusters over MCP

Turn it on in Settings › Agents. Agents can read, and propose actions that you confirm or dismiss in the app.

A console that shows what Sternpost does to the cluster

Every action, the API requests behind it, and the kubectl command that would do the same.

Follow a CronJob to be notified of every run

A new look

A floating panel, accent-tinted surfaces, tabs on the detail pane and full-width logs and terminal. Reduce motion is respected everywhere.

Switching list pages is instant on a slow cluster

Cancel indexing on a large cluster

The indexing dialog has a way out, and a link to the search settings.

Choose the table density

With optional row stripes and row hover, in Settings → Appearance.

Clusters that sign in through a plugin work when Sternpost is opened from Finder

Kubeconfigs that run kubelogin, aws or gke-gcloud-auth-plugin no longer fail outside a terminal.

A missing sign-in plugin is named in the error

Edit a manifest and save it

Review the diff before anything is applied.

A home page for each cluster

Counts, and what needs your attention.

Get notified when a Job finishes

With a notification center to catch up.

Search a log

In the lines already loaded or across the whole log.

Resource lists update live as the cluster changes

Sort a list by clicking a column heading

The sort is remembered per table.

Sternpost orange is the default accent

Factory reset in Settings → Appearance brings it back if you changed it.

Focus rings follow the accent colour

No blue flash at launch when your system accent is another colour

A crashed container reads Error until Kubernetes reports CrashLoopBackOff

Follow your system's accent colour, or pick your own

Keyboard shortcuts in Settings

⌘ Cmd + N opens the namespace scope.

Resource lists show every row

Lists read from a live cache, scroll smoothly, and no longer stop at 500.

The table header stays above the rows when scrolling

The window is titled Sternpost

Open a shell in a container

Typing echoes instantly, even on a slow connection.

Settings and the other side pages close like a drawer

Click × or press Escape to go back.

One picker for namespaces and pods

The namespace scope, the page filter and the pod picker are one multi-select.

A page opened from the command palette takes keyboard focus

Run a CronJob now

From its page or the command palette, after one confirmation.

See a CronJob's Jobs on its page, newest run first

Read the logs of a container's previous run

Picked automatically when the container is crash-looping.

Stats for nerds

Every process Sternpost runs, with its CPU and memory, live.

Detail pages say how the resource is doing

A one-word state at the top, and conditions show their status and reason.

Pod and revision tables follow a rollout live

Forward a local port to a pod

Show the logs and terminal panel full screen

ConfigMap and Secret pages open on their manifest

Ingress pages show their hosts as links, at the top

Switch cluster from the command palette or the status bar

Give each cluster its own colour

Browse every kind your cluster serves, custom resources included

CPU and memory usage in tables and charts

From Prometheus or the Metrics API.

Search the navigation menu, and choose what the header search covers

One layout for every page, with full-width tables

The first build of Sternpost

Browse clusters, workloads, logs and configs from the kubeconfig you already have.