The dashboard

The dashboard at https://cove.localhost holds your sites and everything around them: their mail, databases, logs and files. Every view has its own address, so you can bookmark it or paste it.

Opening it#

Open https://cove.localhost in any browser. On alternative ports the address carries the port too, for example https://cove.localhost:8453. cove status prints the address along with Adminer's and Mailpit's.

The dashboard answers only on the computer running Cove. A shared site doesn't share the dashboard.

The views#

Five views sit along the top: sites, mail, databases, logs and files. Back and Forward walk through what you opened.

Sites#

Every site Cove manages, with its type, WordPress and PHP versions, size on disk and when it last changed. Type to filter by name, or use filters like type:laravel, plugin:woo or is:outdated. Pin the sites you're working on to the top.

The add form makes a WordPress, Laravel, Minn Engine or plain site, or brings in any app from a git URL, folder or archive. Drop a backup zip on it to import one instead. Right-click any row for its menu: open, log in, rename, PHP version, logs, mail, delete and more.

A site's page#

Click a site to open its page at /site/<name>: its versions, size and path, a capture of its front page, and buttons to open it or log in. The tabs depend on what the site is.

• WordPress: plugins, themes, users, cron, traffic, history, snapshots, and a WP-CLI console.
• Laravel: users, routes, migrations, schedule, traffic, snapshots, and an artisan console. A workers row turns the queue worker, the scheduler and Reverb on and off.

The capture is taken with a Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Edge, Arc or Vivaldi already on your computer, and refreshed when the site changes.

Mail#

Every email your sites send, caught by Mailpit. Each message carries a chip for the site that sent it; click it to see only that site's mail. Links in a message, like a password reset, are lifted out with a copy button. See Mail.

Databases#

Every database with the site that owns it: MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and a Laravel app's SQLite file. Page through any table, double-click a cell to edit it, and run SQL with ⌘↵. See Databases.

Logs#

The shared PHP error log and the services' logs, then each site's: PHP errors, its own debug.log or laravel.log, and its access log. Repeats fold into one row and a click opens the stack trace. Leave live on to watch a log grow.

Files#

Each site's folder, with an editor for text files. ⌘S saves; if the file changed on disk while it was open, Cove asks before overwriting it. Images preview in place. Drop files or whole folders on the listing to upload them.

Keys#

On Linux and Windows, Ctrl stands in for ⌘. The toggle at the top right switches between light and dark; right-click it to pick system, light or dark.

Adminer and Mailpit#

Two more tools ride along, both signed in for you and both only on this computer:

• Adminer at https://db.cove.localhost, for exports, imports and schema changes.
• Mailpit's own inbox at https://mail.cove.localhost.

The menu bar app#

A small companion that shows whether Cove is running, from the top of your screen. Its menu starts and stops the services, opens a site or logs in to it, and opens the dashboard, Adminer and Mailpit.

cove menubar enable            # build, install and launch it
cove menubar disable           # quit it and remove it

On macOS it's a native menu bar app, built on your computer, which needs Apple's Command Line Tools. On a Linux desktop it's a tray app, which needs python3 with GTK 3 and AyatanaAppIndicator3; Cove offers to install them through apt. It's off until you turn it on, and cove upgrade keeps it current after that.