flash

Flash and SketchyBar

SketchyBar is “A highly customizable macOS status bar replacement” for “people that like playing with shell scripts”: items are added with sketchybar --add commands in a sketchybarrc, fed by plugin scripts, and can subscribe to events or poll. It is GPL-3 C, about 12,500 stars, with v2.24.1 in October 2026. It is the reference bar on macOS, and it does more as a bar than Flash does.

	SketchyBar	Flash’s bar
License, price	GPL-3, free	MIT, free
Definition	Shell commands per item; Lua (SbarLua) or C helpers for speed	One tmux-format template string with `#[...]` styles and `#{...}` values
Data	Scripts you write, events (`front_app_switched`, `space_change`, `volume_change`, …) or `update_freq` polling	Bundled plugins (CPU, memory, disks, network, battery, processes, media, tmux, quotas) and named shell sources or `#()` jobs
Popups	Popup menus of items	Terminal popups: a real PTY running any command, hover or click
Widgets	Items on the bar only	Desktop widgets from the same templates
Per display, notch	`display=main\|all`, `notch_width` and offsets	`monitor`, `#[align=notch]`
Permissions	Screen capture for menu-bar aliases	None beyond Flash’s Accessibility
Integration	AeroSpace and yabai hooks, `sketchybar --trigger`	Status values from the same plugins as hints and search; mode pill
Maintenance	v2.24.1, October 2026; active	1.0.0, October 2026

Where SketchyBar is stronger

Arbitrary layout and drawing. Backgrounds, borders, icons, graphs, animations, bracketing, popup menus, and anything a script can compute. Flash’s bar is a text line with meters and sparklines.
Menu-bar aliases can mirror native menu-bar extras into the bar.
A large ecosystem of configurations, themes and helpers, and the SbarLua API for low-latency event handlers.
Events from tiling window managers are first-class; many AeroSpace and yabai setups are built around it.

Where Flash is stronger

No scripts to maintain for the common values. CPU, memory, disk, network, battery and top processes come from plugins that sample on one scheduler and pause when the display sleeps; the tips page of SketchyBar itself asks users to reduce polling and compile helpers for performance.
Terminal popups. Hovering a segment opens btop, newsboat or calcurse in a real terminal, instead of a menu of items.
Widgets from the same template language, drawn on the desktop.
One file for bar, hints, modes and widgets, and the bar shows the current mode.
No screen capture permission.

Flash features you might like

The tmux format language: #[fg=yellow]CPU #[meter=20]#{flash.plugin.cpu.percent} with conditionals and #() jobs (status format).
[popup.<name>] tables and the hover markers that open them (popups).
[widgets.<name>] for a conky-style panel (widgets).
The example bar with feed, quotas and system metrics.

Moving from SketchyBar

SketchyBar	Flash
`sketchybar --add item cpu right` + `plugins/cpu.sh`	`#{flash.plugin.cpu.percent}` in the template
`update_freq=2`	The plugin’s own cadence; `[plugin.<id>]` keys
`--subscribe front_app_switched`	`#{flash.active_app}` updates on focus events
Popup menu	`[popup.<name>]` with a command, opened from `#[popup=<name>]`
`display=all`	`monitor` in `[statusbar]`
`notch_width`	`#[align=notch]`
AeroSpace workspace item	Keep SketchyBar, or a shell source running `aerospace list-workspaces --focused`
Aliases of native extras	Not available; Flash hides the native bar and offers `mouse_menubar` to reach extras

[statusbar]
enabled = true
template = "#[fg=yellow]CPU #[fg=default]#{flash.plugin.cpu.percent} #[fg=yellow]MEM #[fg=default]#{flash.plugin.memory.percent} #[align=right]%H:%M"

Running both bars on one display makes no sense; Flash users who want SketchyBar’s drawing keep SketchyBar and leave [statusbar] disabled, and still get hints and modes.

Checked 2026-10-14 against the SketchyBar README, events and tricks pages.

This site is open source. Improve this page.