Dynamic Island on macOS using SketchyBar

Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro implementation on Mac using SketchyBar

If you're interested in supporting me and want a completely written in Swift version (with more features and GUI), then checkout my FluidNoti app.

I will still be updating this sketchybar version of dynamic island as well, but FluidNoti will be more actively developed.

DEMO

Table of Contents

Installation

Updating

Uninstallation

Optimal Setup

Configuration

Features

Todo

Bugs

FAQ

Credits

Installation

Requirements

• Homebrew
• SketchyBar
• sf-symbols (brew install --cask sf-symbols)
• jq (brew install jq)

For music island to work properly you need the following additional requirements

• cava (brew install cava)
• Background Music (brew install --cask background-music)

Getting Started

Installation can be done with brew:

brew tap crissnb/dynamicisland
brew install DynamicIslandSketchybar

Now a userconfig.sh file must be copied to ~/.config/dynamic-island-sketchybar/ directory. This can be done by copying an appropriate config file for your machine.

E.g. for 2021 MacBook Pro 14 Inch:

cp ~/.config/dynamic-island-sketchybar/userconfigs/mbp2021_14.sh ~/.config/dynamic-island-sketchybar/userconfig.sh

The file must be called userconfig.sh and located right under dynamic-island-sketchybar directory for dynamic island to function.

Finally, the Dynamic Island can be opened via

dynamic-island

NOTE: There appears to be a bug that dynamic island helper program does not run the first time it is installed (after restarting sketchybar). If this is the case, simply restart the program.

If you'd like to have the dynamic-island run automatically, then have the command at the end of sketchybarrc (in case you are using sketchybar).

Updating

Just go into the dynamic-island-sketchybar directory and pull the changes from this repository.

cd ~/.config/dynamic-island-sketchybar
git pull

Uninstallation

Uninstalling this project can be done by removing the symlink and the config folder (this repository).

rm $(which dynamic-island-sketchybar)
rm -r ~/.config/dynamic-island-sketchybar/

This will remove dynamic-island-sketchybar. Note that this will not remove sketchybar (see sketchybar documentation for sketchybar uninstallation guide).

Configuration

All Dynamic Island configuration can be done in ~/.config/dynamic-island-sketchybar/userconfig.sh. There are userconfig.sh presets created in ~/.config/dynamic-island-sketchybar/userconfigs/, so copy the appropriate config for your machine during installation for best results.

By default, dynamic island will take input from Apple Music. If you would like to use Spotify instead, change P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_MUSIC_SOURCE variable in userconfig.sh to "Spotify" instead.

As of right now, users need to manually adjust the notch size in pixels. If you have found an optimal notch size for MacBook with a notch, please let me know. Once enough data has been gathered, preset system will be implemented.

Disabling features

Set the option for the island you want to disable to 0 in your userconfig.sh

P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_MUSIC_ENABLED=0
P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_APPSWITCH_ENABLED=0
P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_NOTIFICATION_ENABLED=0
P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_VOLUME_ENABLED=0

Notifications are disabled by default.

You need to restart sketchybar service in order for the changes to take effect.

Screen resolutions

In order for the dynamic island to properly scale with your monitor's resolution, you need to specify your monitor's resolution manually by changing P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_MONITOR_HORIZONTAL_RESOLUTION variable in userconfig.sh. If you are using an external 1080p monitor, you would set this value to the following:

P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_MONITOR_HORIZONTAL_RESOLUTION=1920

In case of built-in display, it must be divded by 2, e.g.: MBP 14 has 3024 resolution, so 3024/2=1512.

Features

The following is a list of features that this dynamic island project (working islands) has. Some islands do not work properly just yet. Thus, you may experience some glitches when using them.

• General Notifications (experimental)

• Volume/Brightness

• Music

• Pause/Resume

• App Switch

• Power Source

• WIFI

Enabling notifications may have performance impact. Music island saves the artwork 'temporarily' (this artwork file is then replaced with a newer artwork file, if requested) to display it on the dynamic island. It also creates a cache file.

Recommended Features

For "general notifications" feature, I suggest you to turn on the "Do Not Disturb" on your macOS settings. This way the notifications will only be shown via the dynamic island.

If you would like to purely rely on the dynamic island interface for your volume and brightness levels, type the following command in terminal:

launchctl unload -F /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OSDUIHelper.plist

This requires you to disable system integrity protection (SIP).

Todo

• Code cleanup for notification helper
• Make GitHub Wiki
• Hide the notch on non-notched laptops

Upcoming Features / Upcoming Islands

• Lock / Unlock
• Bluetooth status
• Do not disturb
• ...and more!

Bugs

If you encounter any bugs, feel free to open up an issue!

Contributing

Pull requests are also welcome.

The following terms/system may be relevant when looking at the code:

There are mainly three parts of this implementation of dynamic island: dynamic island item, dynamic island helper (written in C, communicates with sketchybar) and island scripts (written in shell script)

The dynamic island has its own event items. These event items are subscribed to sketchybar's specific events, e.g. "volume event", "brightness event", etc. These event items will cast a trigger called dynamic_island_queue with environment variables provided (details).

The dynamic island helper receives a trigger dynamic_island_queue and processes the islands in a queue (first come, first serve). An item from the queue gets removed when the dynamic island item is not handling any islands. To remove an item from the dynamic island queue, the dynamic island helper program calls another trigger, di_helper_listener_event with environment variables that describe the island (i.e. identifier of the island, args). This event will then call process.sh, which will then call the correct island from island scripts depending on the environment variables provided.

The island scripts also contain delays and get automatically reset (reset.sh) after a set amount of duration. After reset.sh script runs, the island item's process is finished.

When an island item finishes its process, it tells the helper program to process the next item in the queue.

Tested devices

• 2021 MacBook Pro 14

FAQ

Q: Can I use this on MacBook without a notch?

A: Yes, it should work, using this config will create a notch on your device.

Q: Can I use this with multi monitors?

A: It's possible. You can either configure it to show in specific displays (e.g. main display) or all displays. However, unexpected results might occur if you attempt to use this project with multiple monitors of different resolutions.

Credits

Base sketchybarrc was taken from FelixKratz's dotfiles.

Base visualizer config was taken from @ColaMint