PeaceTimer

A Liquid-Glass menu-bar countdown for macOS.

Fully native. PeaceTimer is a 100% native SwiftUI app — no Electron, no web view, no cross-platform wrapper. Pure SwiftUI + AppKit (MenuBarExtra, NSVisualEffectView, CoreGraphics, IOKit), compiled to a single native .app. Of course it is. 🙂

A premium macOS 14+ menu-bar app built with MenuBarExtra, NSVisualEffectView blur, and a code-rendered "mercury drop" identity. Its signature interaction is a drag-to-stretch timer: drag along a glowing track to set a countdown from 0 to 5 hours, with crisp haptics at every 30-minute milestone.

What it does

• Drag-to-stretch timer — MainPopOverView.stretchTrack maps the track width to 0…300 minutes; the glowing accent fill stretches as you drag, and NSHapticFeedbackManager fires at each 30-min milestone.
• Live read-out — bold, scannable 03h 24m under the track.
• Liquid Glass UI — VisualEffectBlur + micro-gradients + a 1px inner border (Color.white.opacity(0.15)) + soft shadow, all in the reusable .glassCard().
• Code-rendered icon — AppIconView (full app icon) and a monochrome menu-bar template glyph that grows its core while a countdown is active.
• Menu-bar-only or Dual mode — toggle in Settings flips NSApp.setActivationPolicy between .accessory and .regular.
• Launch at login — SMAppService.mainApp (ServiceManagement) registers the app as a login item; toggle in Settings.
• Auto-update — Sparkle with an EdDSA-signed appcast on GitHub Pages; Settings ▸ Updates has "Check Now" + an auto-check toggle. Dormant until you add a signing key — see UPDATES.md.
• Built with the latest — Swift 6 (approachable concurrency, MainActor-by-default), Xcode 26, macOS 14+. CI ships an unsigned alpha on every push to main, with a styled drag-to-Applications DMG.
• Sleep prevention — an IOPMAssertion (kIOPMAssertionTypeNoIdleSleep) holds the Mac awake while a countdown runs, released on pause/finish.
• Saved note + attended automation — when the timer hits zero, the chosen AI app (Claude / ChatGPT / Perplexity / Cursor) is brought forward; if "Attended auto-submit" is on and a note exists, the app asks for confirmation, then pastes (⌘V) and presses Return.
• Self-tracked usage gauge — a local % ring for a user-defined window (default 5h). You start/reset the window yourself.

App icon — native Liquid Glass .icon

The icon is a real Icon Composer .icon bundle (the macOS 26 Liquid Glass format, not legacy .icns/.appiconset), wired through the asset catalog:

Assets.xcassets/
├─ AppIcon.icon/
│  ├─ icon.json            # layered manifest: glass, translucency, shadow, per-appearance opacity
│  └─ Assets/
│     ├─ drop.svg          # mercury-drop core (front, crisp)
│     └─ ring.svg          # lens ring (back, glass: true)
└─ AccentColor.colorset/   # global tint (#63BCFF)

It degrades gracefully: the layered glass renders on macOS 26 "Tahoe"+, and the same artwork falls back to a flat icon on Sonoma/Sequoia. To tweak it visually, open Assets.xcassets/AppIcon.icon in Icon Composer (bundled with Xcode 26: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Icon Composer.app) and edit the layers or export. Validate from the CLI with:

xcrun actool Assets.xcassets --compile /tmp/out --platform macosx \
  --target-device mac --minimum-deployment-target 26.0 \
  --app-icon AppIcon --accent-color AccentColor \
  --output-partial-info-plist /tmp/partial.plist

Build

Option A — XcodeGen (recommended):

brew install xcodegen
cd PaceTimer
xcodegen generate
open PaceTimer.xcodeproj      # ⌘R to run
# or headless:
xcodebuild -scheme PaceTimer -configuration Debug build

Option B — by hand: create a new macOS App target in Xcode, delete its stub files, drag in Sources/ and Resources/Info.plist, set the build settings shown in project.yml (Info.plist path, entitlements, deployment target 14.0, hardened runtime, sandbox off).

Permissions (first run)

1. Accessibility — required for the ⌘V + Return keystroke synthesis. The app prompts via AXIsProcessTrustedWithOptions; approve it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
2. Notifications — for the passive fallback reminder.
3. Automation — macOS will ask the first time the app activates a target AI app.

The App Sandbox is off (see PaceTimer.entitlements) because keystroke synthesis and cross-app control require it. Sign with your own team for distribution.

Troubleshooting

"It keeps asking for Accessibility even though I already granted it"

macOS (TCC) identifies an app by its code signature, not its name or path. An unsigned or ad-hoc-signed build gets a new identity on every rebuild, so the grant you gave the previous build no longer matches the binary you just launched — macOS sees a brand-new app and asks again. The old entry stays behind in System Settings, still switched on, pointing at a binary that no longer exists. That's why toggling it there doesn't help.

Permanent fix — sign with a stable identity:

• Local dev: in Xcode, Signing & Capabilities → check Automatically manage signing and pick your team (a free Apple ID gives you an "Apple Development" identity). That identity is stable across rebuilds, so the grant sticks.
• Distributed builds: sign with a Developer ID Application certificate and notarize. Releases built by CI are currently unsigned (CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO), so each downloaded build re-asks — expected until signing secrets are wired in.

While iterating, clear the stale entry between builds:

./Scripts/reset-accessibility.sh
# equivalently: tccutil reset Accessibility com.robyrew.peacetimer

Also make sure you launch the same copy you granted — a build in DerivedData, a copy in /Applications, and one running from a mounted .dmg are three different apps as far as TCC is concerned.

App behaviour

The app no longer prompts for Accessibility at launch. Settings shows a live Accessibility status row with a Grant… button and a shortcut into System Settings; it flips to "Granted" the instant you approve, without relaunching.

Rebrand / configure

Everything brandable lives in AppConfig (Sources/AppMain.swift): appName, accent colors, the 5-hour ceiling, and the haptic interval. AI-app bundle IDs live in AITarget.bundleIDs (Sources/TimerEngine.swift) — verify yours with osascript -e 'id of app "Claude"' and edit if a launch fails.