BitBar (by Mat Ryer - @matryer) lets you put the output from any script/program in your Mac OS X Menu Bar.
- Download latest BitBar release - requires Mac OS X Lion or newer (>= 10.7)
- Visit the app homepage at https://getbitbar.com to install plugins
- Get started and installing plugins
Digging deeper:
- Browse plugin repository
- Guide to writing your own plugins
- Distributing pre-configured BitBar
- Learn about integrating with bitbar via the bitbar:// URL scheme
And finally...
Example showing the latest Buy and Sell figures for BitCoins:
Click to see the full output, and more options:
Example showing your internal and external IP addresses:
There are two ways to install BitBar on your Mac:
Use Homebrew:
brew install bitbar
Or download .app file directly: Get the latest version of BitBar. Then copy it to your Applications folder and run it - it will ask you to (create and) select a plugins folder, do so.
There are two ways to install BitBar plugins on your Mac:
Browse our plugins to find useful scripts, or write your own.
Or just download the plugin of your choice into your BitBar plugins directory and choose Refresh
from one of the BitBar menus. Remember to use chmod +x {pathname}
before you use the plugins.
pathname
- The pathname of the file
The refresh time is in the filename of the plugin, following this format:
{name}.{time}.{ext}
name
- The name of the filetime
- The refresh rate (see below)ext
- The file extension
For example:
date.1m.sh
would refresh every minute.
Most plugins will come with a default, but you can change it to anything you like:
- 10s - ten seconds
- 1m - one minute
- 2h - two hours
- 1d - a day
Ensure the plugin is executable by running chmod +x plugin.sh
.
Because Git will ignore everything in Plugins/Enabled
, you can use it to maintain your own plugins directory while still benefitting from tracking (upstream) changes.
cd Plugins/Enabled
# Enable spotify plugin
ln -s ../Music/spotify.10s.sh
# Enable uptime plugin and change update interval to 30 seconds
ln -s ../System/uptime.1m.sh uptime.30s.sh
Then select the Enabled
folder in your BitBar preferences.
In case you made the mistake of choosing a directory with thousands of files as the plugin directory and BitBar getting stuck forever, do this from terminal to reset it:
defaults delete com.matryer.BitBar
- Help us solve bugs or build new features.
- If you want to contribute a plugin, please head over to the Plugin repository and submit a pull request. Be sure to read our guide to writing plugins below.
To work on the BitBar app, fork, then clone this repo.
In terminal, navigate to the project directory and run:
git submodule init && git submodule update
- Special thanks to @muhqu and @tylerb for all their help (see commit history for details)
- Thanks to Chris Ryer for the app logo - and to @mazondo for the original
- Thanks for all our plugin contributors who have come up with some pretty genius things
We're always looking for new plugins, so please send us pull requests if you write anything cool or useful.
Join the conversation with plugin authors and BitBar maintainers on Slack.
If you've got ideas, or want to report a bug, nip over to our issues page and let us know.
If you want to contribute, please send us a pull request and we'll add it to our repos.
- Ensure the plugin is executable
- Be sure to include appropriate Metadata to enhance the plugin's entry on getbitbar.com
- To write a plugin, just write some form of executable script that outputs to the standard output.
- Multiple lines will be cycled through over and over.
- If your output contains a line consisting only of
---
, the lines below it will appear in the dropdown for that plugin, but won't appear in the menu bar itself. - Lines beginning with
--
will appear in submenus.- Use
----
etc. for nested submenus. Two dashes per level of nesting.
- Use
- Your lines might contain
|
to separate the title from other parameters, such as...href=..
to make the item clickablecolor=..
to change their text color. eg.color=red
orcolor=#ff0000
font=..
to change their text font. eg.font=UbuntuMono-Bold
size=..
to change their text size. eg.size=12
bash=..
to make the item run a given script terminal with your script e.g.bash=/Users/user/BitBar_Plugins/scripts/nginx.restart.sh
if there are spaces in the file path you will need quotes e.g.bash="/Users/user/BitBar Plugins/scripts/nginx.restart.sh"
param1=
to specify arguments to the script. additional params like thisparam2=foo param3=bar
full examplebash="/Users/user/BitBar_Plugins/scripts/nginx.restart.sh" param1=--verbose
assuming that nginx.restart.sh is executable orbash=/usr/bin/ruby param1=/Users/user/rubyscript.rb param2=arg1 param3=arg2
if script is not executableterminal=..
start bash script without opening Terminal.true
orfalse
refresh=..
to make the item refresh the plugin it belongs to. If the item runs a script, refresh is performed after the script finishes. eg.refresh=true
dropdown=..
May be set totrue
orfalse
. Iffalse
, the line will only appear and cycle in the status bar but not in the dropdownlength=..
to truncate the line to the specified number of characters. A…
will be added to any truncated strings, as well as a tooltip displaying the full string. eg.length=10
trim=..
whether to trim leading/trailing whitespace from the title.true
orfalse
(defaults totrue
)alternate=true
to mark a line as an alternate to the previous one for when the Option key is pressed in the dropdowntemplateImage=..
set an image for this item. The image data must be passed as base64 encoded string and should consist of only black and clear pixels. The alpha channel in the image can be used to adjust the opacity of black content, however. This is the recommended way to set an image for the statusbar. Use a 144 DPI resolution to support Retina displays. The imageformat can be any of the formats supported by Mac OS Ximage=..
set an image for this item. The image data must be passed as base64 encoded string. Use a 144 DPI resolution to support Retina displays. The imageformat can be any of the formats supported by Mac OS Xemojize=false
will disable parsing of github style:mushroom:
into 🍄ansi=false
turns off parsing of ANSI codes.
To enhance your entry on getbitbar.com, add the following metadata to your source code (usually in comments somewhere):
# <bitbar.title>Title goes here</bitbar.title>
# <bitbar.version>v1.0</bitbar.version>
# <bitbar.author>Your Name</bitbar.author>
# <bitbar.author.github>your-github-username</bitbar.author.github>
# <bitbar.desc>Short description of what your plugin does.</bitbar.desc>
# <bitbar.image>http://www.hosted-somewhere/pluginimage</bitbar.image>
# <bitbar.dependencies>python,ruby,node</bitbar.dependencies>
# <bitbar.abouturl>http://url-to-about.com/</bitbar.abouturl>
- The comment characters can be anything - use what is suitable for your language
bitbar.title
- The title of the pluginbitbar.version
- The version of the plugin (start withv1.0
)bitbar.author
- Your namebitbar.author.github
- Your github username (without@
)bitbar.desc
- A short description of what your plugin doesbitbar.image
- A hosted image showing a preview of your plugin (ideally open)bitbar.dependencies
- Comma separated list of dependenciesbitbar.abouturl
- Absolute URL to about information
For a real example, see the Cycle text and detail plugin source code.
- If you're writing scripts, ensure it has a shebang at the top.
- You can add to
PATH
by including something likeexport PATH='/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:$PATH'
in your plugin script. - You can use emoji in the output (find an example in the Music/vox Plugin).
- If your bash script generates text in another language, set the
LANG
variable with:export LANG="es_ES.UTF-8"
(for Spanish) to show the text in correct format. - If you want to call the plugin script for action, you can use
bash=$0
- If your plugin should support Retina displays, export your icon at 36x36 with a resolution of 144 DPI (see this issue for a more thorough explanation).
#!/bin/bash
date
#!/bin/bash
# the current date and time
date
# the current username
echo $USER
# the current user id
id -u
#!/bin/bash
echo "One"
echo "Two"
echo "Three"
echo "---"
echo "Four"
echo "Five"
echo "Six"
- Only One, Two and Three will appear in the top bar
- Clicking the plugin menu item will show all lines
#!/bin/bash
curl -m 1 http://example.com -I >/dev/null 2>&1
[ $? -gt 0 ] && echo "FAIL | color=red" || echo "OK | color=green"
echo "---"
echo "Show Graphs | color=#123def href=http://example.com/graph?foo=bar"
echo "Show KPI Report | color=purple href=http://example.com/report"
#!/bin/zsh
FONT=( 'size=14' 'font=UbuntuMono' )
if ((0)); then echo "DO | $FONT color=orange"
else echo "DO | $FONT color=cadetblue"
echo "---"
...
Anything that can write to standard out is supported, but here is a list that have been explicitly tested.
- Ruby
- Status: Working
- Output:
puts "your string here"
- Python2
- Status: Working
- Output:
print "your string here"
- Python3
- Status: Working
- Output:
print("your string here")
- Caveats: To output unicode shebang has to be in the format
#!/usr/bin/env PYTHONIOENCODING=UTF-8 /path/to/the/python3
- JavaScript (
node
)- Status: Working
- Caveats: Shebang has to be in the format
#!/usr/bin/env /path/to/the/node/executable
- Output:
console.log("your string here")
- Notes:
process.stdout.write
doesn't output desired text.- There may be a better way to run JavaScript files.
- Tips:
- Use the Node.js
bitbar
module to simplify plugin creation.
- Use the Node.js
- CoffeeScript (
coffee
)- Status: Working
- Caveats:
- Shebang has to be in the format
#!/usr/bin/env /path/to/the/coffee/executable
coffee
shebang also had to be modified.#!/usr/bin/env /path/to/the/node/executable
- Shebang has to be in the format
- Output:
console.log "your string here"
- Notes:
process.stdout.write
doesn't output desired text.- There may be a better way to run CoffeeScript files.
- Swift (Interpreted)
- Status: Working
- Output:
print("your string here")
- Swift (Compiled)
- Status: Working
- Caveats: You still need a file extension (
file.1s.cswift
) - Output:
print("your string here")
- Notes:
- To compile a swift file, use:
xcrun -sdk macosx swiftc -o file.1s.cswift file.1s.swift
- To compile a swift file, use:
- Go (Interpreted)
- Status: Working
- Caveats:
- Your script's shebang must be:
//usr/bin/env go run $0 $@; exit
go
must be in yourPATH
- Your script's shebang must be:
- Output:
Println("your string here")
- Go (Compiled)
- Status: Working
- Caveats: You still need a file extension (
file.1s.gotool
) - Output:
Println("your string here")
- Notes
- To compile a Go file, use:
go build file.1s.go
- To compile a Go file, use:
- Lisp
- Status: Working
- Caveats:
lisp
/clisp
must be in yourPATH
- Output:
(format t "your string here")
- Perl5
- Status: Working
- Output:
print "your string here"
- Notes
- Add
-l
to shebang to automatic add newline to print function:#!/usr/bin/perl -l
- Add
- PHP
- Status: Working
- Output:
echo 'your string here'
- Notes
- Add shebang
#!/usr/bin/php
- Add shebang
- Utilities:
- BitBar PHP Formatter - https://github.com/SteveEdson/bitbar-php