Desktop news ticker for Mac
Stay informed without being interrupted.
FeedsBar streams high-signal headlines across your Mac desktop in a slim, always-on ticker. Quietly. Continuously.
Curated feeds. Or suggest one.
Hand-picked sets of sources. Switch one on and the ticker fills with it.
Whatever's moving right now. Feeds publishing in the last hour.
Bring your own feed
RSS, YouTube or Reddit
Suggest a feed. If it passes our checks, it usually joins the catalog straight away.
How it works
Three steps. No learning curve.
Choose your topics
Pick from curated topic feeds designed to surface what matters. News, tech, finance, science and more. Nothing noisy.
Let FeedsBar run quietly
FeedsBar sits discreetly on your desktop, above the Dock or below the menu bar, updating continuously. No interruptions.
Stay informed at a glance
Glance at your Orbs to see what’s moving right now. Click a headline to open the story. Go deeper when you want to.
Or give it the whole screen.
The same feeds as a board you can read across the room, on a spare monitor, the office wall, or as your screensaver when the Mac goes idle. Cards change one at a time, never all at once.
Live right now. Same headlines, topics and weather the app receives. Press Full screen to fill your display.
It follows your music
Play a song and the ticker re-tunes to the artist: press, videos, gigs, similar artists, podcasts.
You’re in control
FeedsBar adapts to how you work, not the other way around.
Smart Orbs
It reads the topic, not just the headline.
FeedsBar groups what your sources publish into topics, then reduces each to three phrases. Not headlines. The thing the headlines are about.
Live right now.
Click any phrase to open the article it came from. In the app, clicking the orb itself puts the ticker in focus mode and narrows it to that topic’s sources.
Simple pricing
One price. One purchase. Forever yours.
Pay once. Keep it open.
- All features at launch
- All 1.x updates included
- No subscription required
Try it free for 30 days first. Full refund within 14 days of buying, no reason needed.
No subscriptions. No ads. Nothing about what you read.
Questions
What is a news ticker?
A single line of headlines that scrolls steadily across the screen, the way stock prices cross a trading floor display or news crawls along the bottom of a TV broadcast. You read it when you glance at it and ignore it the rest of the time. Nothing pops up, nothing demands a click.
Where does the ticker sit on screen?
Wherever you put it. FeedsBar runs as a slim bar you can place at the top or bottom of any display, and on multi-monitor setups you choose which screen it lives on. It stays out of the way of your other windows.
Can I use my own feeds?
Yes. Paste any RSS or Atom feed URL and it goes live on your ticker the moment it validates, alongside or instead of the curated sets. YouTube channels and subreddits publish feed URLs too, so those work the same way. You can also suggest a source you think others should have.
Will it slow my Mac down?
It is built not to. Feeds refresh in the background every few minutes rather than continuously, and the ticker deliberately avoids the effects that make an always-on window expensive to draw. No blur passes, and only one element animates at a time on the full-screen board.
Does it work offline?
The ticker keeps showing the last headlines it fetched, so a dropped connection leaves you with slightly stale news rather than an error. It picks up again when you reconnect.
Is there a free trial?
Yes. Download FeedsBar and start the 30-day trial from the first screen: every feature, no card, no account, once per Mac. If it earns its place, buy it once. If you buy and change your mind, there is a full refund within 14 days.
Is there a subscription?
No. FeedsBar is a one-time purchase and the licence does not expire. There is no account to create and no recurring charge.
Does the music feature listen to my microphone?
Not unless you ask it to. "Tune to Music" reads only the track name your player announces when a song changes. No microphone involved. "Listen to the Room," which identifies music playing around you, is off until you switch it on, macOS asks for mic permission first, and identification happens on your Mac: a short audio fingerprint is matched against the Shazam catalog, and the audio itself never leaves the machine.
What does FeedsBar know about what I read?
Your feed choices and reading stay on your Mac. The app fetches the same public feeds for everyone and does not report back which headlines you looked at or clicked.
Which Macs does it run on?
FeedsBar is a native macOS app for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. The download page lists the current version and its minimum macOS requirement.
Trust & privacy
FeedsBar is a tool you own, not a service that owns your data.
No ads
Your attention is not our product, and never will be.
Nothing about what you read
We never see your feeds or what you open. The app checks in behind a random id so we can count installs.
No account required
Download, activate, done. No accounts. No sign-ups.
The Signal 500 monthly
The best essays we read, and the sources we added. No pitch, no digest of our own news.