A pluggable desktop widget system - Home Assistant today, anything tomorrow.
Snapdash gives you a clean, always-visible snapshot of live data — sensors, metrics, anything that streams. Built in Rust for stability, performance, and 24/7 reliability, it sits quietly on your desktop without leaks, lag, or surprises.
Today it speaks Home Assistant. Tomorrow, anything you can wire up via plugins.
Built with Rust for stability, performance, and long-running reliability — SnapDash is designed to run quietly in the background without leaks, lag, or surprises.
🚧 Status: Early development / MVP — first public release, expect rough edges.
| Widget | Settings |
|---|---|
 |
  |
- Real-time updates via Home Assistant WebSocket API
- Frameless widgets - pin individual sensors as floating macOS-style cards
- Native look - Mac Light / Mac Dark themes, smooth pulse animations on state change
- Secure token storage - credentials lives in OS keychain (macOD Keychain / Windows Credential Manager / Linux Secret Service), never in plain text
- Cross-platform - macOS, Windows, Linux
- Lightweight - low CPU / memory footprint, designed to run 24/7 in background
- Pluggable (planned) - Home Assistant is the first integration; plugin API for arbitrary data sources is on the roadmap
- Fully customizable cards and layouts - in progress
- Sensor history and lightweight charts - in progress
Because SnapDash is meant to be boring in the best possible way.
Rust lets us build a widget that doesn’t slowly eat memory, doesn’t spike the CPU, and doesn’t need babysitting. You start it, pin it to your desktop, and it just keeps doing its job.
Grab the latest release for your platform from the Releases page:
- macOS:
.tar.gz(Apple Silicon) /.dmgwill be added later - Windows:
.zipportable /.msiinstaller (will be added later) - Linux:
.tar.gzportable /.AppImage
Right-click → Open once.
"Snapdash is damaged and can't be opened" on macOS
macOS blocks unsigned apps from the internet. Snapdash is not yet signed with an Apple Developer ID - we are tracking this in #12.
Remove the quarantine attributes (one-time, recommended):
xattr -cr /Applications/Snapdash.app # or where your Snapdash.app livesOr right-click the app -> Open -> click Open in the dialog. Either way, very the download first:
shasum -a 256 -c snapdash-vX.Y.Z-macos-aarch64.tar.gz.sha256Easier: install via Homebrew (recommended):
brew tap schizza/tap
brew install --cask snapdashHomebrew automatically removes the quarantione attributes and handles
updates via brew upgrade.
Requires Rust 1.85 (2024 edition)
git clone https://github/schizza/snapdash.git
cd snapdash
cargo build --release
# Run directly
cargo run --release- Launch Snapdash - the Settings window opens automatically on first run.
- Enter your Home Assistant URL (e. g.
http://localhost:8123). - Paste your Long-Lived Access Token (see below).
- Hit Save - Snapdash connects and lists your sensors.
- Tick any sensor -> a floating widget appears for it.
- Drag widget anywhere on screen. They remember their position.
- Open your Home Assistant UI in a browser.
- Click your user profile (avatar in bottom-left)
- Go to Security -> Long-Lived Access Tokens
- Click Create token, name it (e.g.
Snapdash), confirm - Copy the token immediately - Home Assistant only shows it once.
- Paste it into Snapdash Settings , confirm
- Copy the token immediately - Home Assistant only shows it once.
- Paste it into Snapdash Settings -> Home Assistant token field.
After saving, the token is moved to your OS keychain. The config.json file never contains the token.
If the token is compromised: delete it in HA, generate a new one, paste it into Snapdash Settings (the 🗑 button next to the token field also clears the keychain entry).
Snapdash uses a simple JSON config in your user profile. If the config is corrupted, Snapdash falls back to defaults and writes a fresh file on next save.
| OS | Config | Log |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/dev.snapdash.Snapdash/config.json |
~/Library/Application Support/dev.snapdash.Snapdash/debug.log |
| Windows | %APPDATA%\dev.snapdash.Snapdash\config.json |
%APPDATA%\dev.snapdash.Snapdash\debug.log |
| Linux | ~/.config/snapdash/config.json |
~/.local/share/snapdash/debug.log |
Settings window doesn't open First run with no config auto-opens Settings. If it stays closed, check the log file.
Invalid JSON ... using defalut config in log
The config file got corrupted. Delete it or fix the JSON manually, then reconfigure via Settings.
No widget windows appear despite saved entities Check the log for HA WebSocket errors - token expired, URL unreachable, network blocked. Open Settings, hit Save again to force a reconnect.
Token issues
On macOS/Windows the token only lives in the keychain. To reset: in Settings, click 🗑 to clear, then paste a fresh token and save.
- Frameless widget windows + macOS-style theming
- Home Assistant WebSocket integration with reconnect
- Secure token storage in OS keychain
- Real-time state updates with pulse animations
- Multi-widget configuration via Settings
- Local history & 24h sparkline charts
- System tray menu & autostart
- Plugin API for non-HA data sources
- Linux-specific window hacks (XShape rounded corners)
- Code-signed releases (macOS notarization, Windows signing)
- Auto-update mechanism
See the issue tracker and project board for current work.
- Rust (2024 edition) - core language
- Iced (forked) - GPU-accelerated GUI via wgpu
- Tokio - async runtime
- tokio-tungstenite - WebSocket client
- reqwest - HTTP client (initial state fetch)
- keyring - cross-platform OS credential storage
Contributions welcome! Pleas read CONTRIBUTING.md (TODO) and check open issues for places to start.
Bug reports and feature requests via the issue tracker.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
See NOTICE for third-party attribution.
