Live values on Mac: your smart home in the menu bar

channelBar for macOS shows you more than just messages. A static channel brings the current values from your smart home live into the menu bar, and with the matching switches and sliders in its menu, you control your home right from there. The values come from Home Assistant or from an MQTT broker. As an example, this sets up a channel for a single room: the kitchen.

With the Setup Assistant

The quickest way is the assistant. Click the channelBar icon at the top, choose “Setup Assistant…” and then “Live values in the menu bar”. With “Let’s go”, it takes you to your channel in just a few steps.

Connecting Home Assistant

Under “Connections”, you choose where the values come from: “Connect Home Assistant…” or “Connect MQTT broker…”. For Home Assistant, the “Address” is already filled in with homeassistant.local:8123. If you open Home Assistant in your browser under a different address, enter that one; pasting the full URL works too.

You also need an access token. “Open token page” takes you to the right page in Home Assistant: choose “Create token” there, name it channelBar and paste the token here. Copy it right away, Home Assistant shows it only once. “Test connection” shows whether everything works, and “Add connection” adds it.

channelBar now loads all values from Home Assistant, and then the connection shows up in the list. Here you can add more connections if you need them, for example to an MQTT broker. For the kitchen, this one is enough, so click “Continue”.

Creating the channel and choosing values

The channel gets its name, here “Kitchen”, and “Create channel” creates it. You can change the name at any time.

Now you choose the values. Rooms and names come straight from your Home Assistant, and on the right, you see the current value of each. For the kitchen, that’s the light, “Setpoint” and “Mode” from the heating, plus both blinds and the window. In this setup, the light above the oven sits in an area of its own; the checkbox in front of it selects everything in it at once, the light and its “Brightness”.

Layout and menu bar line

After “Next”, you choose the layout. “Flat” puts all values straight into the menu, with separators between the devices; that works well for a single room. “With Submenus” spreads the values across submenus instead. “Add to Channel” adds your selection.

If the assistant finds suitable values in your selection, it suggests them for the menu bar, here the window. It’s called “Position” because Home Assistant only lists the sensor as a general opening, not as a window; you’ll change that later. As the “Label”, you enter “Kitchen”, which then appears in front of the value. After “Use it”, the channel already shows the window up top, and “Finish” closes the assistant.

All the way to the left

We like to show the room on the far left, ahead of the other channels. Just hold down the Command key and drag it to the left in the menu bar.

Fine-tuning

Click “Kitchen” to see the menu the way the assistant built it. In a neatly maintained Home Assistant, that may already be just right, but here the window is called “Position”. You do the fine-tuning in the settings, which you reach at the bottom of the menu with “Settings…”.

Icons for the window

Up in the menu bar, you recognize an icon faster than a word. Under “Icons”, the plus adds a new one: it gets a name and, as its source, an SF Symbol, a file or a URL. The window gets two, with the SF Symbols for a closed and for an open window. The open one gets an orange “Tint Color”, so it stands out up top right away; tints are available for SF Symbols. Once created, you can use an icon in all your channels.

A pipeline for the light

Under “Processors”, you create pipelines. They prepare values before they appear in the menu. “Add Step” offers many steps, such as “Round”, “Calculate”, “Trim”, “Template” and “Map”. Several steps in a row produce the result that you then use in the menu.

For the lights, a single “Map” step is enough: the “Input” on becomes a light bulb as the “Output”, and off stays empty.

The title in the menu bar

Back at Kitchen, go to the “Menu Bar” page. With “Preview”, you see every change right away, just as it appears up top. In the “Menubar Title”, choose “Dynamic value” under “Add cell” and pick the kitchen light; under “Pipeline”, add the new pipeline. A “Spacer” moves the window to the right, and you drag it to the end by its handle.

For the window, you adjust the “Value mapping”. The word “closed” can stay as it is; only the icon for the closed window is new, placed in front of it with “Add cell” and “Static icon”. “open” stays as well, with the orange icon in front of it. “Apply” finishes each mapping.

Arranging the menu

Under “Menu Items”, the window is still called “Position”. Click the row and name it “Window”. You change the order by dragging the handle: the light above the oven goes to the top, while the heating and the window move down. Delete the “Separator” between the two blinds, because they belong together.

The result

Up top, Kitchen now shows the window. Turn on the kitchen light in the menu, and the bulb appears right in the menu bar. That’s how channelBar shows your home, exactly the way you want it.