Channels on Mac: set them up your way

Every channel in channelBar for macOS has its own settings. You’ll find them at the bottom of the channel’s menu, under “Settings…”. On the left are all your channels, at the top the pages of the selected channel: “Channel”, “Provider”, “Menu Bar”, “Stream” and “Outputs”. A channel with live values only has “Channel” and “Menu Bar”.

Feeds and polling interval

The “Provider” page shows where the messages come from; in a feed channel, that’s its feeds under “RSS/Atom Feed (News/Podcasts)”. The “Polling Interval” sets how often channelBar checks them for new items, from 5 minutes to 24 hours. It applies to every feed in the channel that doesn’t have its own.

Finding new feeds

You get new feeds with “Find podcasts, news and videos…”. Know a website? Enter its address, for example 9to5Mac’s, and channelBar finds the site’s feed on its own. One click on “Add”, and the feed belongs to the channel.

Instead of an address, a YouTube name with an at sign, like @name, or a search word works too. For a search word, channelBar looks in its own catalog and in Apple’s podcast directory. Before channelBar contacts YouTube for the first time, it asks for your consent once.

A feed of its own

The gear next to a feed opens its “Feed Settings”. Under “Custom Title”, you give it a name of your own, under “Polling Interval” an interval of its own. That’s also where you pause it: with “Paused”, channelBar stops checking the feed.

Below that, “Retention” and “Message Filter” apply to this feed only: its retention replaces the channel’s, and its filters add to the channel’s. “Save” applies your changes.

The channel

On the “Channel” page, “Sync with Other Devices” decides whether the channel reaches your other devices. When it’s off, the channel and its providers stay on this Mac. If you already sync with other devices, channelBar asks when you turn it off whether they should keep the channel or remove it together with its messages.

Below that, “Count” and “Days since received” set how many messages channelBar keeps per feed and for how long. Out of the box, both say “Default”: 250 messages and 90 days.

A filter under “Message Filter” keeps messages out, for every feed in the channel. You choose whether it checks the message, its link or its context, whether that “Contains” a word or “Equals” it, and type the word. Upper and lower case don’t matter. When a new message matches, channelBar silently ignores it; whatever is already there stays.

Symbol and number color

Under “Menu Bar”, you set what appears up in the menu bar. On the “Menu” tab, the “Content” field of the “Menu Bar” row holds the text channelBar shows up top. With the “Newsreader” preset, that’s a newspaper symbol followed by a placeholder for the number of unread messages. The symbol is just text, an emoji: swap it for a globe, and the menu bar shows it right away.

Further down, “Channel badge color” sets the color of the number, for example “Blue” instead of “Red”. That way you can tell your channels apart at a glance. A color written directly into the content takes precedence.

Cards in the menu

For videos, “Short Form” pays off. Under “Menu Bar”, open the “Submenu” tab and set “Row Layout” from “Details” to “Short Form”. The “Image Format” is 16:9 by default, which suits videos; there’s also 4:3, 1:1 and “No Image”. “Title Lines” sets how many lines the title gets.

Now the menu shows each message as a small card with an image and a title. The submenu with a message’s details is left out. If you need it, choose “Short Form + Details”.

Notification and sound

Under “Outputs”, you decide for each channel whether new messages show a notification and play a sound: with the switches for “Notifications” and “Audio”. You pick the sound under “System Sound”. With the “Newsreader” preset, both are on from the start.

A new channel

The plus at the bottom left creates a new channel. Give it a name under “Identifier”, here “Sports”, and choose its type: “Static” shows live values from Home Assistant and MQTT, and there’s a separate video for that. “Messages” receives messages, from feeds for example. You can’t change the channel type later.

For a feed channel, choose the “Newsreader” preset. It sets the symbol, the number and the layout to match: a newspaper symbol with a red number, messages grouped by feed, plus notification and sound. After “Create”, the channel appears up in the menu bar, at first in gray with its name in square brackets. Its symbol appears with the first message. In the list on the left, it sits in the same place as up top.

More providers

On the “Provider” page, the preset has already set up the feed provider. “Add Provider” adds more, because messages can also come from entirely different sources: for example through the “Command Line Application”, an “HTTP Webhook”, “MQTT” or “Home Assistant”. How that works with the command line and a webhook is shown in the video on your own sources.

In short

The minus removes the selected channel again. channelBar asks first and tells you how many messages are deleted along with it. In short: feeds are under “Provider”, retention and filters under “Channel”, symbol and layout under “Menu Bar”.