How to read this, and why the dates matter more than the reviews
Almost every roundup of Mac ticker apps repeats a list assembled years ago. That is how you end up installing something that has not been built since before the version of macOS you are running. So the only opinion this page really offers is a date, and every date comes from a primary source: Apple's own App Store lookup for store apps, and the GitHub API for open-source ones.
Two habits worth stealing if you check these yourself. On GitHub, read the last commit rather than the last push, because a push can be a bot touching a branch: one well known desktop widget tool reports activity in 2025 and last had a real commit in December 2023. And stars measure how interesting something was, not whether it runs. The two most starred crypto tickers on GitHub last shipped in 2017 and 2022.
One piece of context for anything living in the menu bar. macOS 27, released on 14 September 2026, redrew the menu bar as a single window and broke the apps that hide icons, Bartender and its alternatives among them. It did not break ordinary apps that simply add an icon of their own, and several tickers shipped updates in the days right after. If a ticker is misbehaving on macOS 27, suspect your menu bar manager first.
Share price and market tickers
The healthiest of the four. Seven of the eight below shipped within the last month, and there are maintained open-source options as well as paid ones, which is rare in this category.
The distinction that matters when choosing: most of these cycle or stack symbols inside the menu bar, and only a couple actually scroll a strip across your screen. If you want movement, check that specifically, because several are explicit that they do not do it.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- Free with subscription
Store listing: version 2026.9.0, updated 2026-09-17
Rotates a watchlist through the menu bar, with price alerts. The release notes mention menu bar reliability when displays are rearranged, so someone is testing on current macOS.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- Free with paid tiers, including a one-time option
Store listing: version 3.12.2, updated 2026-09-15
Compact quotes in the status item plus portfolio monitoring. Needs macOS 14 or later.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- One-time purchase
Store listing: version 1.9.46, updated 2026-09-03
One of the few that genuinely scrolls quotes across a desktop bar rather than cycling them in the menu bar, and it carries a portfolio table.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- Free
Store listing: version 1.2.9, updated 2026-09-14
Worth reading its own listing before you buy into the name: it says plainly that it is not realtime, quotes refresh about once a minute, and it does not scroll. Every symbol sits in the bar at once.
- where
- Mac App Store, direct, and Homebrew
- price
- Free with a Pro tier, monthly or lifetime
Store listing: version 1.9.0, updated 2026-09-04. Apple lists the seller as Ioannis Ilias Farmakis; the app is marketed as BitVibe Labs
Puts scrolling lanes in the space either side of the notch: symbols, indices, futures, coins, weather, keyword alerts. Needs a Mac with a notch, which rules out desktops.
- where
- GitHub release only
- price
- Free, open source
GitHub API: release v1.9.18 and last commit both 2026-09-22
The most actively released open-source option, more than 30 releases since June. Stocks, ETFs, indices and crypto in one status item with portfolio profit and loss. Watch out for a stale 0-star fork with an identical description; the link here is the canonical repo.
- where
- GitHub, with its own updater
- price
- Free, open source
GitHub API: release v1.5.2 and last commit both 2026-09-23
Sparklines, price alerts, multiple exchanges. Its most recent release is a menu bar text color fix, which is a good sign on a new macOS. Note the name collides with an unrelated App Store app.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- One-time purchase
Store listing: version 1.10, updated 2026-02-16
Covers mainland China, Hong Kong and US quotes plus forex and futures, which few others do. No build in about seven months.
News headline tickers
This is the abandoned one, and it is worth being precise about how abandoned. Besides ours, every app built specifically to scroll publisher headlines across a Mac screen has either stopped or gone very quiet. The best known of them markets itself as the number one news ticker and last shipped in August 2024. One site is still selling a ticker for Mac OS X 10.6. There is also no credible open-source option: the most starred project is a single day's work from 2019, and the well known open-source ticker for this, TICKR, is for Linux and Windows rather than the Mac.
We are not a neutral party here, so treat the conclusion sceptically and check the dates yourself. They are all linked.
- where
- Direct download and our own Homebrew tap
- price
- One-time purchase, with a trial
Our own changelog: 1.2.14 on 2026-09-25
We make this, so read the entry as the pitch it is. A strip along the top or bottom edge of a chosen display, carrying any RSS, YouTube or subreddit URL, plus a market quotes lane. It is not a menu bar app and not a reading app.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- One-time purchase
Store listing: version 1.0.6, updated 2025-10-06
A movable, resizable scrolling strip where clicking a headline opens the article. The closest thing to a maintained dedicated news ticker besides ours, and it has still been about a year. Apple lists no vendor website for it.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- One-time purchase
Store listing: version 1.5.2, updated 2024-08-16
Calls itself the number one news ticker, and for a while it probably was. No build in over two years, and it has never shipped for macOS 15, 26 or 27. The vendor's site still lists and links it with no notice that it has stopped.
- where
- GitHub
- price
- Free, open source
GitHub API: only release 1.0.0 on 2019-07-14, last commit the same day
The highest-starred open-source result for a Mac news crawl, and it is a single day's work from 2019 that was never returned to.
- where
- Direct
- price
- One-time purchase
The site's own HTTP Last-Modified header: 2010-08-12. The page asks for Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5 or 10.6
Included because the name still ranks for ticker searches and the site still takes purchases, not because it is a news ticker: its own copy describes tracking stock prices, and it does not scroll. Nothing on the site has changed in sixteen years. An app built for that era is 32-bit, and macOS dropped 32-bit support in Catalina back in 2019, so it will not launch on any Mac sold today.
- where
- Direct
- price
- One-time purchase, historically
Vendor site returns HTTP 423 Locked, checked twice on 2026-09-26
A scrolling ticker fed by AppleScript, well liked in its day. We cannot confirm anything about its current state because the only source of truth is offline, so we are not going to guess.
Tickers for your own feeds
Thin, and thinner than it looks. There is exactly one credible third-party RSS ticker on the App Store, it requires a very recent macOS, and its last build predates macOS 27. Searching GitHub turns up either brand new projects with no users or abandoned ones from 2017.
If you only want to read your feeds rather than watch them go past, do not buy a ticker at all. NetNewsWire is free, open source, excellent, and the right answer to that question. Our scored directory of feeds works just as well pasted into it.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- One-time purchase
Store listing: version 1.30, updated 2026-04-01, requires macOS 26 or later
The only credible third-party RSS ticker on the store. Animates your own feed items across the menu bar with control over size, speed, color and order. Requires a very recent macOS, and has not shipped since before macOS 27.
- where
- Direct download and our own Homebrew tap
- price
- One-time purchase, with a trial
Our own changelog: 1.2.14 on 2026-09-25
Ours again, and it belongs in this section too: you can point it at any feed URL you like, and personal feeds are fetched and parsed on your Mac rather than by us.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- One-time purchase
Store listing: version 7.0, updated 2024-05-12
Often suggested for this, though it is a menu bar feed reader rather than a ticker. No build in over two years either way.
Crypto price tickers
Healthy, with a twist: the apps that rank highest are not the ones still being built. Three shipped this month. Meanwhile the top result in store search has been quiet for over a year, and the two most starred open-source options last released in 2017 and 2021.
Check coin coverage before paying. One of the maintained options tracks a fixed list of around twenty coins, which is fine for Bitcoin and awkward for anything else.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- One-time purchase
Store listing: version 1.0.2, updated 2026-09-22
Price, daily change and direction in the menu bar. Covers a fixed list of about twenty coins, so check yours is on it before buying.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- Free
Store listing: version 1.2.9, updated 2026-09-14
Thousands of currencies and a lot of display styles. Same engine as the same vendor's stock app, so it does not scroll either.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- Free with a one-time Pro unlock
Store listing: version 2.5.3, updated 2026-09-11
The widest coin coverage here, and several coins visible at once.
- where
- Mac App Store, source on GitHub
- price
- One-time purchase
Store listing: version 3.5.1, updated 2026-01-09. GitHub last commit 2026-01-08, but its last GitHub RELEASE is 2021-06-23
Judge this one by the store, not the repo. The releases page makes it look five years dead when the code was touched in January. Still around eight months quiet.
- where
- Mac App Store
- price
- Free
Store listing: version 3.9, updated 2025-07-23
Ranks at or near the top of store search for this, which is why it is here. Over a year without a build.
- where
- GitHub
- price
- Free, open source
GitHub API: release v3.2.0 on 2017-07-12, last commit 2017-08-21
The second most starred open-source result for Mac crypto tickers, and nine years without a commit. Stars are a record of the past, not a sign of life.
What Apple already gives you, and where it stops
Share prices
Stocks has watchlists, charts and business news, and there are Symbol and Watchlist widgets. Apple documents exactly two places a widget can live: the desktop and Notification Center. The menu bar is not one of them. Nothing scrolls, there is no profit and loss, and you cannot add your own data source.
News headlines
Apple News has no ticker and no scrolling mode of any kind. It is also only available in a handful of countries, so for most of the world it covers nothing here.
Your own feeds
Nothing. macOS ships no RSS reader. Safari dropped feeds long ago and Mail never had them. This is a gap by absence rather than by limitation.
Crypto
Nothing at all.
The thing underneath all four: there is still no Apple interface for scrolling text in the menu bar, and no official way for an app to manage status items. That is why the menu bar manager category broke when macOS 27 changed how the bar is drawn, and it is why every app on this page had to build its own approach.
Where we stand, and how this page is made
FeedsBar is ours, it appears in two of the four sections, and it is marked both times. We would obviously rather you bought it. The defence against that being worthless to you is that everything here is checkable: every date is linked to the vendor's own store listing or repository, and you can verify any row in about a minute. Nothing on this page is an affiliate link and nobody paid to appear.
Two limits to state plainly. A last-shipped date is not a verdict on quality: plenty of software is finished, and a quiet app can work perfectly well, so we have labelled the state rather than judged the app. And this is a snapshot taken on September 26, 2026. Anything here could ship tomorrow, which would be good news, and this page would be wrong until we update it.
Developers: if your app is listed with the wrong date or the wrong description, tell us and we will fix it. If we have missed an app that belongs here, the same applies.
The one we make
FeedsBar is a strip along the edge of a display you choose, carrying headlines from feeds you pick, with a market quotes lane if you want one. Hand-picked sources scored in the open, a trial before you buy, one payment, no account, and no analytics in the app.