swiftbar

★ swiftbar

20 Apr, 2026 • 156 words • 1 min • updated 22 Apr, 2026

Powerful macOS menu bar customization tool

It is comparable to i3bar and i3status, but on macOS.

My current setup:

macOS status bar

This screenshot is from a few months ago (January).

From left to right, skipping the default macOS Control Center icons on the right side:

On-call tribunal · in 7m: next calendar event of the day, with a countdown — via a Raycast extension
🟢 VPN: VPN status — green when connected (SwiftBar)
🔒 TP [6h]: time left on my Teleport session (SwiftBar)
☁️ AWS [2h]: time left on my AWS credentials (SwiftBar)
👤 Decisive Battle · 目黒将士: currently playing track on Spotify¹ — via a Raycast extension

Each SwiftBar item is its own script, refreshed on its own cadence. The shorter the refresh interval, the more system resources it takes, naturally.

Scripts live in ~/.config/swiftbar.

Here’s a typical one: ~/.config/swiftbar/corp-status.30s.sh.

30s in the filename means that the script is refreshed every 30 seconds.