A newsroom ticker,
running on your Mac.
XTicker floats a live ticker above your Dock or flush below the menu bar — pick from ten themes, including translucent Windows Aero with lime accents, brushed-metal Mountain Lion, Christmas, Halloween, and the classic LED matrix. Stocks (delayed quotes are labeled), headlines, sports scores, your calendar, sun, moon and tides, air quality, Now Playing, and more, scrolling by continuously.
Pick a theme, not a compromise.
Every theme runs the same seventeen sources — switch anytime from the Display tab, no restart required.
A dot‑matrix grid with a faint unlit background — each source colored red, green, yellow, or light‑blue.
Brushed metal and a backlit green LCD, straight out of the click‑wheel era — with a play button of its own.
Bordered, compact status modules in the classic Control Strip style — one bracketed reading per source.
A navy title bar and beveled grey ticker straight out of 1995 — including the new air quality reading.
A red alloy badge and a dark technical readout set in the bundled Orbitron display font.
A low‑glare red technical display with a subtle glass reflection, made for dark rooms and late nights.
Brushed metal, Aqua buttons, and classic Mac typography. Select it in Settings or the ticker’s right-click menu.
Theme illustration · sample readings
Blue glass, glossy controls, and a splash of lime green. Select it in Settings or the ticker’s right-click menu.
Theme illustration · sample readings
Evergreen and cranberry, gold labels, a tree emblem, and static festive lights. Select it in Settings or the ticker’s right-click menu.
Theme illustration · sample readings
Midnight purple, pumpkin orange, cream lettering, and a jack-o’-lantern. Select it in Settings or the ticker’s right-click menu.
Theme illustration · sample readingsEverything the app actually does.
Ten themes, two placement positions, and seventeen optional sources — each with a switch to turn it off and an optional daily schedule.
Ten ticker themes
An LED matrix with a faint unlit dot grid, a brushed‑metal iTunes LCD, a compact Mac OS 9 Control Strip look, Windows 95, Crimson Alloy, the low‑glare red Stealth, OS X Mountain Lion, Windows Aero with lime accents, Christmas, or Halloween. Switch from Settings or the ticker's right‑click menu.
Placement & sizing
Above the Dock or flush below the menu bar, in small, medium, or large, at full display width. System, Light, or Dark Studio appearance.
Menu bar control
Press Control–Option–T to show or hide the ticker from any app. Hide for 10 Minutes, or go Menu Bar Only and keep XTicker out of the Dock entirely.
Stocks & ETFs
Up to twelve US symbols with price and percentage change, labeled DELAYED when appropriate. An optional market‑hours switch respects holidays and early closes.
Headlines, RSS & your feeds
BBC, NPR, The Guardian, ABC News, PBS News, Al Jazeera, and Ars Technica across six topic feeds, interleaved and deduplicated — plus up to five of your own named HTTPS RSS or Atom feeds.
Calendar
Upcoming events from Apple Calendar, including Google calendars already synced to it. Pick one calendar or all, a 1–14 day look‑ahead, all‑day events optional.
Now Playing
Your current Spotify or Apple Music track, read locally through Apple Events. Refreshes every six seconds while something's playing.
Sports scores
NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL — live scores or upcoming games from ESPN's public scoreboard, filterable down to the teams you follow.
Sun, moon & tides
Sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, and phase from the U.S. Naval Observatory. Next high and low tide from a nearby NOAA station.
Planes overhead
Up to three nearby aircraft with callsign, ground speed, and distance — origin and destination shown when a matching route is found.
Mac activity
CPU load, RAM use, battery charge and state, thermal pressure, and an optional local IP address — all read straight from macOS.
Birthday Mode & On This Day
A celebratory message with cake, balloon, and confetti LED glyphs on the date you set. Or one historical event pulled from Wikipedia, once per day.
Air quality
Current modeled U.S. AQI, category, and PM2.5 for your saved location from Open‑Meteo, colored green, yellow, or red. Off by default.
Source schedules
Give any source a daily time window — headlines from 9 to 5, say — including overnight windows. Scheduled sources reappear on their own.
Monitors & location
Pick which display the ticker lives on, and set your location by searching a city, region, or address — no Location Services permission needed.
Built‑in Help & right‑click menu
A searchable Help guide inside the app, Send Feedback in the menu, and a right‑click menu for position, theme, pause, and refresh. Studio opens by itself only on first launch; later launches start with the ticker and menu bar controls.
Seventeen sources for almost any Mac desk.
Each source is switched on independently, colored by LED, and refreshes on its own schedule — from every six seconds to once a day.
See it running.
The Studio window configures every source and how the ticker looks; the ticker itself is what actually floats over your desktop.
Not a mockup — this is the real XTicker Studio window, with a live preview of the ticker running right at the top.
Theme, position, size, and width — with a live preview of the ticker right at the top of the window.
Pick publishers and topics for headline news, then layer on your own RSS or Atom feeds and stock symbols.
Birthday Mode, custom one‑line messages, Now Playing, and your calendar — the sources that make it feel like your Mac.
Sun & moon, tides, and planes overhead — all keyed off the coordinates you set, or your current location.
Built for a Mac that's always on.
Whatever else is on screen, the ticker keeps running underneath it.
Heads‑down work
Keep stocks, headlines, and your next meeting in view without a browser tab open — a thin strip above the Dock, out of the way of everything else.
Streaming & screen shares
The LED matrix theme reads clearly on camera and in screen recordings — sports scores or Now Playing running the whole time you're live.
Multi‑monitor desks
Full display width, placed above the Dock or below the menu bar on whichever screen you want it — a dedicated status line for a second display.
Minimal, menu‑bar‑only setups
Turn on Menu Bar Only and XTicker disappears from the Dock entirely, surfacing Show Ticker, Settings, and About from one icon.
On air in about a minute.
Download the DMG and drag XTicker.app onto the Applications folder shown inside the disk image.
Launch XTicker. The Studio window and a floating ticker open automatically — pick a theme and turn on the sources you want.
Close Studio any time. The menu bar icon keeps Show Ticker, Refresh, and Settings within reach, and checks for updates on its own.
A real Mac app, nothing hidden.
Signed & notarized
Built and notarized through Apple's own process, so it opens like any other Mac app — no Gatekeeper warnings.
macOS 14 or later
A universal Mac app for Apple silicon and Intel, requiring macOS 14 or later.
Stays up to date on its own
Sparkle checks for updates automatically and verifies both the signed appcast and the signed update archive before installing anything.
The ticker, answered.
Is this a beta? How do I get the stable version?
The download button gives you XTicker 1.4.0 Beta 17, the build described on this page. It is signed and notarized by Apple, runs on macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon and Intel, and updates itself through a separate signed Sparkle beta feed. Your settings carry forward from earlier versions. If you would rather stay on the previous stable release, version 1.3.1 is still available, though it has fewer sources and themes than this page describes. To go back from the beta, reinstall 1.3.1.
Does XTicker send my data anywhere?
Calendar events, Mac activity, and Now Playing are read locally through macOS and are not sent anywhere. Each source you turn on contacts only its own public provider and sends just what it needs — a stock symbol, a zodiac sign, saved coordinates (for sun & moon, air quality, and planes overhead), a tide station ID, or an aircraft callsign. City search goes through Apple Maps, and update checks go to GitHub. There are no accounts, analytics, or ads. The privacy page lists every connection.
Can I run more than one source at a time?
Yes — every source in the Studio window has its own switch. Turn on as many or as few as you like; items from active sources interleave on the ticker.
What happens if a source can't be reached?
The last successful items stay visible on the ticker, and the Studio window shows an error for that source so you know something needs attention.
Does it work with more than one calendar?
Yes, including Google calendars you've already synced to Apple Calendar. Choose one calendar or all of them, and a look‑ahead window from 1 to 14 days.
How does XTicker's tip-supported pricing work?
You can download and use XTicker without a required payment, account, or subscription. If you like the software, please buy me a coffee. Tips through that platform support continued development.
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XTicker is made by Hit the Deck Software, a small independent studio building focused, native Mac apps.
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