FeedsBar for Mac

Always-on news ticker for the Mac desktop, with a hand-scored catalogue of 500 sources

Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later (Apple silicon and Intel). Softonic's platform list does not yet include macOS 14 and later, which is why an older version is tagged above.

FeedsBar is an always-on news ticker for the Mac desktop. A slim strip of headlines sits at the top or bottom edge of your screen and scrolls quietly while you work: glance at it when you want, ignore it when you do not. Nothing interrupts, nothing notifies.

What runs across it is up to you. Start from the Signal 500, a hand-scored catalogue of 500 news sites and blogs rated on editorial quality, ad restraint, reach, signal-to-noise, cadence, design and independence, with the method and every score published at on the FeedsBar website. Pick topic bundles from Breaking News to Science, Makers, Culture, Sports or Mac, or add your own RSS feeds. Mute phrases you are tired of, follow ones you care about.

A second ticker can run underneath the first with its own mix, speed, size and colour, including Market Quotes: Bitcoin, Ethereum, EUR/USD, GBP/USD and oil out of the box, plus the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100 and Dow ETFs and gold with your own free Finnhub key.

Play music and the ticker re-tunes to the artist: press, videos, gigs, similar artists and podcasts. Room listening is opt-in and on-device; audio never leaves the Mac.

Give it the whole screen and it becomes a board of large, slow-changing story cards you can read from across the room, on a spare monitor or the office wall, or as your screensaver when the Mac goes idle.

One-time purchase, no subscription, no account. Signed and notarized by Apple. Private by design: no ads, no tracking, no analytics on what you read. Made in Dublin, Ireland by an independent developer.