Peek for Home Assistant

A macOS menu bar app for monitoring Home Assistant sensors without opening a browser.

Features

• Menu bar display - Display selected sensors in the menu bar with custom formatting and separators. Group into pages, cycle via a global shortcut, and auto-reset after inactivity
• Dropdown menu - Show additional sensors in the dropdown menu
• Real-time updates - Live sensor values via WebSocket with automatic reconnection
• Display precision - Honors the display precision configured in Home Assistant for each sensor
• Custom naming - Override sensor names for a more personalized display
• Configurable formatting - Templates for how sensor values appear (e.g., {name}: {value})
• Drag & drop - Reorder sensors and move them between menu bar and dropdown
• Light & dark themes - Pick a theme or follow the system appearance
• Auto-update - Background update checks with one-click install
• Lightweight - Built with Tauri 2.0 for a small footprint and native performance

Install

Download the latest .dmg from GitHub Releases.

Requires macOS 11+ and a Home Assistant instance with a long-lived access token.

Setup

1. Click the Peek icon in the menu bar and open Preferences
2. In the Connection tab, enter your Home Assistant URL and access token
3. Go to the Sensors tab and add the sensors you want to monitor

Build from source

Requires Node.js 20+, Rust, and the Tauri CLI.

npm install
npm run dev     # development
npm run build   # production .dmg

Privacy

Peek has no trackers, no analytics, and does not phone home. The only external connection it makes (besides talking to your Home Assistant instance) is checking GitHub for new versions.

AI Disclaimer

This app is an experiment in building with AI. I wanted to see how far I could push things without manually coding everything myself.

Tauri looked interesting, so I decided to use it. Since I don't know Rust, I set a rule: the entire project had to rely on Tauri's JavaScript API as much as possible.

I guided the process closely and set the direction, but in terms of manual coding, I personally wrote only a very small portion of the code.

Make of that what you will.