LightEmUp is a macOS menu bar app that pushes MacBook XDR display brightness up to 2x the normal limit. Built with Claude Code in a single session.
Normal brightness (1.0x)
Boosted to 2.0x
The Prompt
"My MacBook doesn't get bright enough — make me a menu bar app that can push the screen brightness past the normal limit, using the XDR hardware. Do your best guess, don't stop until I have something I can run."
That was it. One prompt got the working app. Some troubleshooting to nail global hotkeys, but all done in a single session.
What You Get
- Menu bar slider — drag from 1.0x to 2.0x brightness
- Global hotkey (
⌃⌥⌘B) to toggle boost from any app - Native Swift, no Electron — five files, compiled with
swiftc - Works on MacBook Pro 14"/16" and Pro Display XDR
How Claude Built It
No Xcode project. Claude wrote five Swift files and a shell script to compile them. The entire build-test cycle stayed in the terminal: edit, run ./build.sh, open the app, iterate. The first prompt produced a working app — brightness slider, menu bar icon, the whole thing. The one area that took some troubleshooting was getting global hotkeys working reliably, but even that was sorted within the same session.
Source
Full project on GitHub: chomey/lightemup. MIT licensed.