Menubar icon never renders on macOS 26.5.1 (25F80) with 0.9.19 — #146 recurrence, no RenderBox fault

[twodxme]

Summary

Menubar icon never renders on macOS 26.5.1 (Build 25F80) with CodeBurnMenubar 0.9.19. The app launches and keeps running, the CLI contract is healthy, the status-item scene is created — but nothing ever draws. This looks like a recurrence of #146 on a newer macOS build, with one notable difference from the related CodexBar report (steipete/CodexBar#805): no RenderBox precondition failure appears in the log, so the #147 fix path ("start as .regular, activate, simple image first") may not cover whatever changed in 26.5.x.

Environment

• CodeBurnMenubar: 0.9.19 (fresh codeburn menubar --force install; version verified via PlistBuddy)
• macOS: 26.5.1 / Build 25F80
• Hardware: MacBook Pro (M3 Max)
• Install location: /Users/tim/Applications/CodeBurnMenubar.app
• No menubar manager (no Bartender/Ice/HiddenBar); ample free menubar space (notch ruled out)

Actual behavior

• Process launches and stays alive; no crash.
• No menu bar icon, ever.
• Light/Dark appearance toggle has no effect (rules out the appearance-specific render failure seen in CodexBar#805).

CLI contract is healthy

$ time codeburn status --format menubar-json | head -c 400
{"generated":"2026-08-01T05:03:14.207Z","current":{"label":"Today (2026-07-31)","cost":0,...}
codeburn status --format menubar-json  0.56s user 0.18s system 123% cpu 0.606 total

Diagnostics (unified log)

Status-item scene is created:

CodeBurnMenubar: (AppKit) [com.apple.AppKit:StatusBar] 0 create scene 5DAF1172-A4D9-4468-A834-365D847350B3
CodeBurnMenubar: (BoardServices) [com.apple.BoardServices:XPCErrors] [C:1] Alloc com.apple.controlcenter.statusitems

Control Center scene requests complete, but the NSStatusItemView aux scene loops on reconnect:

[com.apple.FrontBoard:Common] Requesting scene <FBSScene: ...; com.apple.controlcenter:3B7E320E-...-Aux[1]-NSStatusItemView> from com.apple.controlcenter.statusitems
[com.apple.FrontBoard:SceneClient] [...-Aux[1]-NSStatusItemView] Sending action(s) in update: NSSceneFenceAction
[com.apple.FrontBoard:SceneClient] [...-Aux[1]-NSStatusItemView] Dropping transition context because the scene is reconnecting
(repeats several times)
[com.apple.FrontBoard:Common] Request for <FBSScene: ...> complete!

~5 seconds after launch, AppKit marks the app auto-terminable, consistent with "no visible UI ever materialized":

[com.apple.AppKit:AutomaticTermination] void _updateToReflectAutomaticTerminationState(void) Setting _kLSApplicationWouldBeTerminatedByTALKey=1

Grepping --info --debug logs for statusbar|renderbox|precondition|isVisible shows no RenderBox fault and no StatusBar state dump with isVisible=0 — unlike the CodexBar case on 26.4.x.

Already ruled out

• Notch / menubar overflow (ample space; external display checked)
• Persisted hidden state (NSStatusItem Visible Item-0 key absent from prefs)
• Stale saved position (NSStatusItem Preferred Position Item-0 = 5694 was present; deleted — no change)
• Full pref reset: defaults delete org.agentseal.codeburn-menubar + killall cfprefsd + relaunch
• killall ControlCenter (scene re-request) — no change
• Quarantine (cleared by the installer; app launches fine)
• Stale build (0.9.19 is the newest mac release; the Fix NSStatusItem not rendering on macOS Tahoe (26.x) #147 fix shipped in 0.9.0)
• Node/CLI health (valid menubar-json in 0.6s, Node 22.13+)

Possibly useful cross-reference

steipete/CodexBar#805 hit the invisible-status-item failure on 26.4.x even after their first timing fix, and needed a second rendering rework (steipete/CodexBar#849, "restore menu bar icon on macOS 26.4") that moved icon rendering off the SwiftUI compositing/RenderBox path. Given 26.5.1 shows a scene-reconnect loop with no RenderBox fault, whatever Control Center changed may now require an equivalent second-round fix here.

Happy to provide fuller log show output or test a patched build.