SketchyBar

SketchyBar is a replacement for the macOS menu bar at the top of the screen. Instead of the standard Apple bar, you get one that you build and style yourself using shell scripts, with full control over every element it displays.

The core idea is that nothing in the bar is fixed. You can add or remove items at any moment, change their appearance, and wire them up to events, all while the bar is running. A weather widget can update on a timer, a notification badge can appear when a message arrives, and a custom graph can draw live data, all driven by scripts you write or borrow from the community.

Out of the box the bar supports text, icons, background colors, borders, popups, mouse clicks, and animated transitions between states. It can also mirror macOS native menu bar apps into its own layout, so you do not have to give up system tray tools you depend on. The event system means items can react to things like song changes, network switches, or any custom trigger you define.

The project is written in C and licensed under GPL v3. It started as a fork of an older project called spacebar, which itself grew out of a status bar feature that the macOS window manager yabai once included. The author has since rewritten it from scratch. A Lua scripting API, a companion symbol font, and C/C++ helper bindings are available as separate related projects. Community-shared configurations and plugins are collected in the GitHub Discussions section, which is a practical starting point for anyone who wants a finished look to build from.