# Port Baba

> A local-first desktop app that finds whatever is holding your dev port and frees it in one click.

_2026-09-05_

[Source](https://github.com/sayeedjoy/portbaba)

`Port 3000 is already in use.` Every developer knows the ritual that follows:
`lsof` or `netstat`, squint at the output, copy a PID, kill it, hope it was the
right one. Port Baba collapses that loop into one window. Find it. Kill it. Free
the port.

It's local-first: no account, and no process data ever leaves your machine.

## What it does

- **Instant port lookup** — type a port and see the process, PID, protocol, and
  state as you type.
- **Project detection** — a bare `node` process gets labelled with context, like
  "Vite dev server", so you know what you're about to stop.
- **One-click cleanup** — tries a graceful shutdown first, with force kill as an
  explicit option.
- **Full port and process views** — every TCP (and optionally UDP) socket, with
  filtering and range scans, or grouped by owning process so related ports stop
  together.
- **Favourites, tray, and shortcuts** — common dev ports one click away from the
  tray, a global shortcut, and a command palette, so the main window can stay
  closed.
- **Local history** — the last 500 termination attempts, stored on-device only.

## Built to be safe

Killing the wrong process is worse than not killing one. Port Baba asks before
it terminates anything, protects known OS processes, validates every port and
PID in the backend, reports permission errors plainly, and never escalates
privileges on its own.

## How it's built

A Tauri 2 shell with a React 19 + TypeScript front end (Vite, Tailwind v4,
shadcn/ui, Zustand). The backend is Rust: `netstat2` discovers sockets and
`sysinfo` reads process metadata, exposed to the UI as Tauri commands. Settings
and history live in a local JSON file — there's no database.

GitHub Actions builds a Windows installer and a universal macOS `.dmg` on every
push to `main` and publishes them as a
[GitHub Release](https://github.com/sayeedjoy/portbaba/releases); the in-app
updater picks up new versions from there.