A scrolling news ticker for your desktop

What a scrolling news ticker is

It is a strip of headlines that moves sideways along the edge of your screen while you work, like the crawl on a news channel. You look when one catches your eye. Our short history of the news ticker covers where the idea came from.

Search for one and you find three kinds. Some scroll on your own desktop, for you to read, and that is what this page covers. Some are widgets that scroll on a website, for its visitors. Some run on a stream or a lobby screen through broadcast or signage software.

Headlines from the first launch

FeedsBar comes with a catalog of more than 800 hand-picked news sources, grouped by category, so the ticker has headlines on it from the start. There are no feed URLs to hunt down. Turn categories and sources on or off in Settings and the line changes to match. New stories join it through the day.

You can add your own feeds too, up to 20 of them. Our RSS ticker guide covers that, and where to find a site’s feed URL.

Put it where you want it

• Along the top or the bottom of the screen, on the display you choose.
• Any speed from half speed to ten times normal.
• Hover to pause it. Click a headline to open the story in your browser.
• Mute a phrase and every headline containing it disappears. Follow one and matching headlines move to the front.

On a Mac it needs macOS 14 or later (download). On Windows it comes from the Microsoft Store and needs Windows 11 (FeedsBar for Windows). There it docks like the taskbar, so maximized windows sit beside it instead of under it.

Two tickers, or a whole screen

You can add a second ticker under the first. It scrolls the other way, with its own speed, size and background, and its own mix: the latest headlines, a shuffle, one category, the Music Lane or market quotes.

For a spare monitor or the screen on the wall, the FeedsBar board runs full screen in a browser. Large cards turn over one at a time, and you can run a ticker along the top, the bottom, or both. Our guide to turning a spare monitor into a news wall covers keeping it on all day.

Is there a free one?

FeedsBar isn’t free. You get 30 days to try everything, then it is $24.99 once, with no subscription, and a 14-day refund if it isn’t for you. One key covers the Mac and Windows apps and the board in your browser.

Two free options are worth knowing. Our Chrome extension shows the 15 newest headlines from the same sources in your toolbar, free for good, though as a list you click open rather than a moving line. Free desktop tickers exist too. The surveys below give the date each one last shipped.

The free scrolling tickers that turn up in search are mostly website widgets. They are built to show headlines to the visitors of a site you run, not to you on your own screen.

Other news tickers

We keep two dated surveys, each checked against a primary source: every ticker app for the Mac and desktop ticker apps for Windows. If you are weighing a ticker against a full RSS reader, our comparison covers that, including where a reader is the better choice.