Flash and Übersicht
Übersicht lets you “Keep an
eye on what is happening on your machine and in the World”: desktop
widgets written as JavaScript modules (JSX or CoffeeScript) that run a
shell command on a refreshFrequency and render HTML into a web view
behind your windows. It is GPL-3, macOS 12+, about 5,000 stars, and dormant:
the last release (1.6.82) and commit date from December 2023.
| |
Übersicht |
Flash widgets |
| License, price |
GPL-3, free |
MIT, free |
| Definition |
A JS module per widget: command, refreshFrequency, render, CSS |
A [widgets.<name>] table with a tmux-format template |
| Rendering |
Web view, any HTML and CSS |
Native text layers: meters, sparklines, colours, no HTML |
| Data |
Shell commands, polled; WebSockets via init |
Bundled plugins, named sources and #() jobs on one scheduler |
| Interaction |
Click events with an interaction shortcut and Accessibility access |
None: widgets are click-through |
| Permissions |
Accessibility for clicks |
Flash’s Accessibility |
| Maintenance |
Dormant since December 2023 |
1.0.0, October 2026 |
Where Übersicht is stronger
- Anything HTML can draw: charts, images, maps, fonts, layouts. Flash
widgets are stacked status lines.
- Click-able widgets and a community collection of hundreds.
- Live editing of widget files with instant results.
Where Flash is stronger
- Cost. A web view per widget polling every second is the pattern its
own issue tracker warns about (one widget at
refreshFrequency: 0 took
over 60 % CPU). Flash widgets share the bar’s scheduler, pause when
covered or when the display sleeps, and are budgeted at under 5 MB each
(performance).
- Maintained, and no JavaScript or CSS to write.
- The same values as the bar, from the same plugins, in one file.
Flash features you might like
- The widget examples: a system panel, a
clock and agenda, a dev corner.
screen = "all" draws a widget on every display; anchors place it.#[spark] sparklines and #[meter=20] meters.
Moving from Übersicht
| Übersicht |
Flash |
command: "top -l 1" + render |
#{flash.plugin.cpu.percent}, #{flash.plugin.processes.top_cpu} |
refreshFrequency |
The plugin’s cadence; [statusbar.sources.<name>] for your own command |
| CSS position |
anchor and offsets in [widgets.<name>] |
| Click handlers |
Not available; use a popup or a mapping |
| Charts, images |
Not available |
[widgets.system]
anchor = "top_right"
template = """
CPU #[meter=20]#{flash.plugin.cpu.percent}#[nometer] #[spark]#{flash.plugin.cpu.history}#[nospark]
MEM #[meter=20]#{flash.plugin.memory.percent}#[nometer]
"""
Checked 2026-10-14 against the Übersicht
README and
site.