KarmaBar

For the karma-obsessed

Track your Hacker News karma in your menu bar on macOS with KarmaBar.

KarmaBar polls the Hacker News API to fetch your latest karma value with a change indicator when it goes up or down.

Download

Download KarmaBar v1.0.1 for Apple Silicon on macOS 26 or later.

SHA-256 checksum · All releases

Features

• 📊 Configurable refresh interval and highlight duration
• 🎨 Custom colours and menu bar text size
• 💨 Quick links to view your comments and submissions

Requirements

• An Apple Silicon Mac
• macOS 26 or later
• Xcode 26 or later to build from source

Build from source

Open KarmaBar.xcodeproj in Xcode and run the shared KarmaBar scheme.

For a command-line build without code signing:

xcodebuild \
  -project "KarmaBar.xcodeproj" \
  -scheme "KarmaBar" \
  -configuration Release \
  -destination "generic/platform=macOS" \
  -derivedDataPath .build \
  CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO \
  build

Privacy

The username and preferences are stored locally in UserDefaults. KarmaBar reads user data from the public Hacker News API; it has no account system, analytics, or advertising.

Releases

Distributable macOS builds should be signed with Developer ID and notarised. See RELEASING.md for the release process.

Licence

MIT

KarmaBar is an unofficial project and is not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator.