Getting started

polso is a macOS 14+ menu-bar-less app. It sits above the menu bar around the camera housing and listens on a unix socket. On Macs without a notch it draws a 160pt fake one at the top center.

Requirements

• macOS 14 Sonoma or later
• Xcode (or the Swift toolchain) for swift build
• just for the recipes (brew install just), optional but handy

Install

1. Clone and build. The app lands in ~/Applications/Polso.app, ad-hoc signed.

   git clone https://github.com/hood/polso && cd polso
   just install

2. Launch it. Two default wings appear: load average on the left, memory on the right.

   just start

3. Send something.

   echo '{"type":"value","slot":"left","value":42}' | nc -U ~/.config/polso/sock
   # ok

4. Optional: start at login. This installs a LaunchAgent (local.polso) that also restarts polso if it crashes.

   just login     # undo with: just unlogin

Tip

Launching the app a second time (Finder, Spotlight, open) doesn’t start a second notch: it opens Settings on the running one. just settings does the same.

The recipes

recipe	does
just push left 42	value to a wing
just ping right	comet + glow on the right wing (no arg: whole notch)
just alert "Deploy failed" crit	alert banner
just send '<json>'	any raw protocol message
just restart	rebuild, reinstall, relaunch
just dev	run in the foreground with logs
just reset-config	drop back to the default config

Next

• Feed it from scripts: Socket protocol
• Let it poll on its own: Sources
• Change what the wings look like: Configuration