tldr: I built a menu bar app that shows HackerNews headlines and stock movements in the space around your notch.
This is for macbook users only. To everyone else, I bid you adieu.
So, that annoying notch, surrounding it, you have a menu bar of sometimes useful things. Wifi, bluetooth, app menus etc. But the only reason I actually LOOK at it is to read the time, or if I have wifi issues. Everything else? I only touch it when something breaks.
Yes, you can make the top menu bar hide/unhide, but then you're just stuck with empty space, as you can't use that space for full screening apps, because of that damn notch!
Sidebar: When I was trading, there was essentially a terminal looking screen, that shows every "posted" OTC trade. After trades are made, they are typically only "posted" to the exchange some 15-30 minutes later (even intentionally delayed to prevent the market from knowing where things actually traded at.) I had to constantly look at this feed, to know where things traded and to make sense of the madness.
So, I wanted something similar. I first built it to show me top (new) posts on hacker news. It simply cycles through headlines. Anytime I see something interesting, I can simply click and read - lovely. This is on the left hand side of the screen. Then, the right, I have it showing the stocks I am following that are seeing significant movements. This is to flag any material moves in the market for the names I have been watching.
Level one is more like an RSS feed. Level two is better curation, eg an LLM filter (future work!) to prevent SQL injections into my brain. If you click on a ticker, it expands and cycles through headlines for that stock.
I don't trade anymore, but I can't stop watching the market. And when you spend half your day speaking to asset managers, it helps to be plugged in.
Some would call it a vanity activity, for now I'm happy to call it passive absorption. When I want to give myself some slack, I turn it off.
It's written in Swift, a first for me, with CC by my side. Enjoy here!