HelioBar

A native macOS menu bar app that shows your live heart rate from an Amazfit Helio Strap — read directly over Bluetooth, no cloud, no account, nothing leaves your Mac.

The strap broadcasts heart rate over the standard BLE Heart Rate service, and HelioBar reads it straight from CoreBluetooth.

📥 Just want to use it? (no GitHub or coding needed)

1. Download HelioBar here — grab HelioBar.zip under Assets.
2. Double-click the zip to unzip → you get HelioBar.app.
3. Drag HelioBar.app into your Applications folder.
4. First time only: macOS says "Apple cannot verify this app" (it's a free app, not paid-signed with Apple). To open it: right-click the app → Open → Open again — or go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click "Open Anyway".
5. Click Allow for Bluetooth.

Then in the Zepp app: Device → Helio Strap → Health Monitoring → turn on Heart Rate Push. Your live heart rate shows up in the menu bar within seconds.

💡 Notch tip: if the icon hides under the notch, hold ⌘ and drag it out to the right.

The rest of this README is for developers who want to build it themselves.

Features

• Live HR in the menu bar — the number, zone-tinted (green / orange / red) with a trend arrow (♥ 84 ↑)
• Dropdown with a live HR sparkline, session min / avg / max, a time-in-zone bar, and % of max HR
• Personalized zones — set your age; zones scale to your estimated max HR (≈ 220 − age)
• Elevated-HR alerts — a macOS notification when your HR stays above a threshold for N minutes (a desk-stress nudge)
• Breathing biofeedback — a guided inhale/exhale timer, inline in the dropdown, so you can watch your HR settle in real time
• Launch at login, no Dock icon, App Sandbox on

Requirements

• macOS 14+
• Apple Command Line Tools (xcode-select -p should point at Command Line Tools) or full Xcode
• An Amazfit Helio Strap (or any device that broadcasts the standard BLE Heart Rate service 0x180D)

Setup

1. In the Zepp app: Device → Helio Strap → Health Monitoring → enable Heart Rate Push. This makes the strap broadcast HR over standard BLE.
2. Launch HelioBar and allow Bluetooth when prompted.
3. The menu bar number goes live within a few seconds.

Notch tip: on a crowded notch-MacBook menu bar, the icon can land under the notch. Hold ⌘ and drag it out to the right — macOS remembers the spot.

Build & install

Command Line Tools path

You do not need full Xcode to run HelioBar. If Apple Command Line Tools are installed, you can build, install, and launch it with one script:

git clone https://github.com/TirthCodes/HelioBar.git
cd HelioBar
./scripts/install-and-run.sh

This installs a signed app bundle at ~/Applications/HelioBar.app and launches it. That stable install location is what macOS uses for permissions, notifications, and Launch at login registration.

To remove it:

./scripts/uninstall.sh

Then in HelioBar, open Settings and turn on Launch at login. You can verify that macOS registered it in System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions.

Full Xcode path

brew install xcodegen          # one-time
git clone https://github.com/TirthCodes/HelioBar.git
cd HelioBar
xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -scheme HelioBar -configuration Release -derivedDataPath build build
cp -R build/Build/Products/Release/HelioBar.app /Applications/
open /Applications/HelioBar.app

Run the logic package build with cd HelioCore && swift build.

If full Xcode is installed, you can also run the logic tests with cd HelioCore && swift test.

Architecture

• HelioCore/ — a Swift package with the pure, unit-tested logic: HealthStore (the single source of truth), the BLE Heart Rate packet parser, HR-zone math, and the elevated-HR alert engine. Run via swift test.
• HelioBarApp/ — the macOS app sources: an AppKit NSStatusItem + NSPopover driving SwiftUI views, and a CoreBluetooth HeartRateMonitor. The menu bar uses AppKit (not SwiftUI's MenuBarExtra) because NSStatusItem survives sleep/wake reliably.
• Root Package.swift — a SwiftPM executable wrapper so the app can be built with Apple Command Line Tools, without relying on Xcode's build system.

The UI only ever reads HealthStore; the BLE monitor pushes into it. Each piece has one job and is testable in isolation.

Notes

• HRV isn't supported: the strap's BLE broadcast sends only the averaged BPM, not the beat-to-beat (RR) intervals HRV requires.
• Stress / energy / readiness need the Zepp cloud, which this app intentionally avoids. Earlier commits explored a (working) cloud integration; it was removed to keep HelioBar fully local. It's in the git history if you want it.

License

MIT