A real LED sign,
in your menu bar.
DotStrip lights up a dot-matrix board next to your clock and scrolls what you care about through it: the song playing, headlines, stock quotes and the weather.
7-day free trial. No account needed to try it.
Four things worth a glance.
Turn on as many as you like. They share the board side by side, each in its own zone, and a playing track takes the wide lane from the news until the music stops.
Now Playing
The track and artist from Spotify or Apple Music, with a thin progress bar riding along the top row.
News ticker
Headlines from any RSS or Atom feed you point it at, crawling past like a newsroom sign.
Stocks
Quotes for the symbols you track, with a little arrow for which way the day is going.
Weather
The temperature in a fixed zone that flips between now, today's high and today's low, with an animated sun and rain. Pick your city from a search so you get the right Springfield.
It scrolls like a sign, not like text.
Most "tickers" are smooth text sliding over a background. DotStrip is built the way a physical board works.
Everything lives in one menu.
Click the panel and you get the lot. No preferences window, no dock icon. The grey rows at the top are a plain-text read-out of whatever has already scrolled past.
- Show what you want. Switch each widget on or off, pick any RSS feed, edit your stock symbols.
- Layout. Give each widget its own zone, or let them share one band and take turns.
- Five colors. Amber, Green, Red, Ice and White, each with its own panel tint, as on real signs.
- HDR Glow. On macOS 26 with a capable display, the lit dots push brighter than white.
- Scroll speed to taste.
Try it for a week. Keep it if you like it.
Download DotStrip and use all of it free for 7 days. After that it takes a subscription to keep the board lit, and the price is shown in the app and at checkout.
DotStrip
Everything in the app, nothing held back.- All four widgets and every color scheme
- Automatic updates through the app
- Cancel any time
- Signed and notarized by Apple
Questions.
What do I need?
A Mac running macOS 13 Ventura or later. There is no Dock icon and no window: DotStrip is just the board in your menu bar, and clicking it opens the settings.
What happens after the 7 days?
The board stops until you subscribe. You'll get a prompt where you can buy or enter a license key you already have.
What permissions does it want?
Only Automation, the first time Now Playing looks for Spotify or Music. If you say no, that widget stays empty and nothing else is affected.
Where does the data come from?
Weather from Open-Meteo, stock quotes from Yahoo Finance, headlines from the feeds you choose. None of them needs an account or API key, and DotStrip keeps no analytics on you. See the privacy policy.
Will it burn my battery?
No. It is designed to redraw as little as possible, and you can pick a slower scroll speed from the menu.
Is it on the Mac App Store?
No, it's a direct download so updates can ship the moment they're ready. It's still signed and notarized, so it opens without a Gatekeeper warning.