RFC: sketchy-helper — expanding into a native macOS event daemon

[malpern]

Context

sketchybar-toggle solves one specific coordination problem between SketchyBar and the native menu bar. But building it revealed a much bigger gap.

SketchyBar's helper/plugin ecosystem is built on C, Rust, and Lua with cross-platform abstractions. Nobody is bridging Apple's native frameworks — CoreAudio, MediaRemote, CoreWLAN, CoreBluetooth, etc. — to push real-time events into SketchyBar. People end up polling shell commands, fighting permission walls on each macOS update, or just giving up.

We've posted this idea to the SketchyBar community to gauge interest. This discussion is for tracking the design and implementation on our side.

Proposed signals

Signal	macOS Framework	Community pain point
Now Playing (track, artist, app)	MediaRemote	media_change broken on Sequoia (SketchyBar #708)
Audio device & volume changes	CoreAudio	SwitchAudioSource polling hangs (SketchyBar #782)
WiFi / network status	CoreWLAN, NWPathMonitor	Permission breakage across updates (SketchyBar #616, #517)
App notification badges	Accessibility / UserNotifications	Not possible via scripts (SketchyBar #317)
Window title without yabai	Accessibility	Unwanted yabai dependency (SketchyBar #435)
Focus / DND mode	NSDoNotDisturbCenter	No existing solution
Keyboard input source	TISInputSource	Breaking on Tahoe (SketchyBar #767)
Menu bar toggle	NSEvent (already shipped)	sketchybar-toggle

Architecture

• Single Swift daemon (sketchy-helper) — ships as one binary via Homebrew
• Subscribes to native macOS callbacks (not polling)
• Fires SketchyBar --trigger events with env vars carrying the payload
• Starts via shell command or LaunchAgent
• Future: Mach message support for direct SketchyBar helper communication

Usage sketch

# Start the daemon
sketchy-helper --start

# In your sketchybarrc
sketchybar --add event media_changed
sketchybar --add item media left \
           --subscribe media media_changed \
           --set media script="echo $TRACK - $ARTIST"

Open questions

1. Repo structure — new sketchy-helper repo, or expand this one?
2. Which signal first? — Now Playing (MediaRemote) seems highest demand
3. Permissions model — some signals (window title, notification badges) need Accessibility; how to handle graceful degradation?
4. Config format — CLI flags, config file, or just "subscribe to what you want"?

Feedback welcome — drop a comment or react to the signals that matter to you.