nightbar

A menu bar app for controlling macOS Night Shift, inspired by nocturnal. Built for Apple Silicon.

Features

• Toggle Night Shift on/off
• Strength slider (color temperature) with live preview
• Schedule control: Off / Sunset-to-Sunrise / Custom
• Timed enable: 1 hour / until sunrise
• Prevent display sleep while Night Shift is on
• Global hotkey toggle (default ⌥⌘N)
• Dimness overlay ("darker than dark")
• Launch at login

Requirements

• macOS 14.0+
• Apple Silicon
• Xcode Command Line Tools
• xcodegen (brew install xcodegen)

Build

make build
make run

make regenerates nightbar.xcodeproj from project.yml, builds, and launches.

Notes

nightbar uses the private CoreBrightness.framework (the same API Apple's own Night Shift UI uses). This means:

• Hardened runtime is off — sandboxing blocks private frameworks.
• Code signing is ad-hoc (-) by default. Switch to your Developer ID in project.yml if you want to distribute.
• Not eligible for the Mac App Store.