Quint Help

The complete Quint guide, the same text as the Help window inside the app (⌘?).

Get Started

Quint puts small live panels, called quintlets, right on your desktop between the wallpaper and your icons. A quintlet can show the time, your battery, the song that is playing, a weather radar, a traffic camera, or anything else you can reach with a command, a script, or a web address.

The quick way

• Click Snippets in the Studio toolbar and pick something ready-made, such as Clock, Battery, or Weather Radar. Choose Add to Desktop and it appears right away.
• Click Arrange, then drag any quintlet where you want it. Drag the round handle in its corner to resize. Click Done Arranging when finished.
• Click Tidy Up to snap everything into a neat grid in one step, grouped the way you choose.
• Use the scene tabs at the top of the list to keep different desktops, such as one for fun and one for Mac stats, and switch between them. See Scenes.
• Choose + → Draw a Frame… or Draw a Line… to box in or divide parts of your desktop. See Frames & Lines.
• Open the Style tab to change the font, size, color, effects, and transparency, and to copy one quintlet's look onto another.

Where things live

• The Studio window lists your quintlets on the left (with scene tabs along the top) and their settings on the right. Click a quintlet in the list and it opens on the desktop, ready to drag.
• The Quint icon in the menu bar opens the Studio, toggles Arrange, refreshes everything, and shows or hides whole groups.
• Closing the Studio does not quit Quint. Your quintlets keep running. Use Quit Quint in the menu bar menu to stop.

Snippets

Snippets are ready-made quintlets, so you never have to write a command yourself. Open them from the Snippets button in the toolbar, the + menu, or the Snippets link above a command box.

Using the library

• Pick a category on the left, or search by name.
• Add to Desktop creates a new quintlet from the snippet.
• See the code shows exactly what a snippet runs, so you can read it first or learn from it.

Government has data straight from US agencies: Gas Prices, National Debt, Jobs & Inflation, the Federal Register, food and vehicle recalls, airport delays, federal holidays and disaster declarations. Utilities has the practical extras: sticky note, World Headlines (a balanced mix of stories from many newsrooms, one from each in turn, with sources shown and repeats merged; choose your sources in the options), sports scores, stocks and planes overhead. Fun has the horoscope, emoji and On This Date. Space has the ISS and Tiangong passes, rocket launches, space weather, aurora maps, live pictures of the Sun, the planets in your sky, meteor showers, near-Earth asteroids, who is in orbit, and the moon.

The For Geeks category has the classics: top, ping, network speed, disk activity, listening ports, open connections, DNS timing, memory detail and more. Ones marked Live refresh continuously, so they run in real time.

Snippets only read information: time, battery, music, weather, and so on. None of them change files or settings. Weather, public IP, and moon snippets contact a public website to get their data; the description says so.

Options: no code needed

Many snippets come with an Options box at the top of the quintlet's Content tab. Fill it in and the quintlet updates straight away. The code is tucked under See and edit the code if you want it. - Countdown: type a title and pick the date from a calendar. It counts days to any event: a birthday, a trip, a holiday. - Big Date: today's date in large type. Choose how it is written (Thursday / October 15, Thu Oct 15, 10/15/2026, 15/10/2026, 2026-10-15 and more). - Clock and Big Time: tick Use a 24-hour clock or leave it off for AM/PM. It starts with your Mac's setting. - World Clocks: click Add a City…, search (Tokyo, Paris, Sydney…), and use the arrows to reorder or the ✕ to remove. - To-Do List: add items, tick them off (they turn grey), delete them, or Clear Checked Items. Sticky Note holds free text, and Emoji shows big emoji; use Emoji & Symbols to open the Mac's emoji picker. - Sunrise & Sunset: tick Use a 24-hour clock or leave it off for AM/PM. - Weather: optionally type another place such as Miami or a zip like 90210, and choose Full (gusts, rain, UV, pressure, sunrise and sunset) or Simple. - Earthquakes: recent quakes from the US Geological Survey, worldwide or within a radius of your saved location. Choose the smallest magnitude (M4.5+ worldwide, M2 or so near you), how far back (day, 7 or 30 days), the radius, most recent or biggest first, and how many. Big ones show in yellow and red, and large ocean quakes get a tsunami pointer. - Hurricane Tracker, Tropical Outlook maps: active tropical storms and hurricanes (name, category, wind, pressure, heading) and the National Hurricane Center's 7-day outlook maps for the Atlantic and East Pacific. - Ocean Buoy: water temperature, waves and wind from the nearest NOAA buoy to your saved location, or a buoy number you enter. River Level: the height and flow of the nearest USGS river gauge, or a site number you enter. - Severe Storm Reports (today's tornado, wind and hail reports, optionally one state), Tsunami Messages, Volcano Alerts (US volcanoes at Advisory, Watch or Warning), and Natural Events (wildfires, storms, volcanoes and more around the world, from NASA). - US Drought Monitor and US Surface Weather Map are picture quintlets you can drop on the desktop. - Air Quality, Tide Times, Weather Alerts: use your saved location. Tides come from the nearest NOAA station (US coasts); alerts come from the National Weather Service (US only). - On This Date: notable events, birthdays or deaths from history on today's date, from Wikipedia. - Space Station Passes: the next times the International Space Station, or China's Tiangong station, flies over your saved location, how long it is up, and which way to look. You can see it when the sky is dark and clear. Choose the station and how high a pass must climb. - Space Weather: the geomagnetic Kp index now and forecast, NOAA's storm scales (G, S, R), the latest solar flare, and what it means for the aurora. Aurora Forecast shows NOAA's map of where the northern (or southern) lights are likely. - The Sun (Corona, Sunspots, Chromosphere) and Sun's Outer Corona (SOHO) are live pictures from NASA spacecraft, refreshed every 15 minutes. Drop one on the desktop as a picture quintlet and give it a stroke and drop shadow if you like. - Planets in Your Sky: which planets are above your horizon right now, how high, which way to look, and whether you need binoculars. Meteor Showers: the next peaks, how many meteors an hour, and which shower is active now. Near-Earth Asteroids: what passes Earth today, with any flagged potentially hazardous (uses NASA's free demo key; add your own in the options if it is rate limited). People in Space: everyone in orbit, with role and days up. Moonrise & Moonset: the moon's phase, how lit it is, and its times, in 12 or 24 hour. - Planes Overhead: the aircraft within 10 to 100 miles of your saved location right now, nearest first, with flight, airline, route (origin → destination), type, altitude, speed and direction. It updates every 30 seconds from a free public aircraft feed. Airline and route come from a free flight database, are remembered for 8 hours, and are based on the flight's usual schedule. Private and small planes have none. Untick Show airline and destination to turn it off. - Rocket Launches: the next launches worldwide with date, countdown, vehicle, mission and launch site. Filter to the US or Florida. The free schedule service allows only a few requests an hour, so it updates every 30 minutes. - Government category: National Debt (Treasury, to the penny, with the daily change), Jobs & Inflation (Bureau of Labor Statistics), Federal Register (newest rules, proposed rules, notices or presidential documents), Food Recalls (FDA, with a Class I-only option), Vehicle Recalls (enter a make, model and year), Airport Delays (FAA ground stops and delay programs, optionally one airport), Federal Holidays (works offline) and Disaster Declarations (FEMA, optionally one state) and Gas Prices (weekly averages from the Energy Information Administration: regular, midgrade, premium and diesel, with the change since last week and last month. It follows your saved location's state or region, or you can pick the US, a region, one of nine states or one of ten cities). All use free public data with no account or key. - Horoscope: pick your sign. Sports Scores: pick a league and optionally one team. Upcoming and live games show the TV channel or stream (mostly US networks, such as ESPN, Fox, Prime Video, Peacock); untick Show which TV channel or stream has each game to hide it. Stock Ticker: list symbols such as AAPL, MSFT; green is up, red is down. News Headlines (RSS): pick from about 25 sources (BBC, NPR, Guardian, ABC, PBS, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Al Jazeera, Sky News, science, health, sports, NASA, tech sites and more) or paste any RSS or Atom feed address.

Quintlets you added from older versions (Clock, Big Time, World Clocks, Weather, Countdown to Christmas) are upgraded automatically the first time you open this version, keeping their look and settings.

Editing the code of a snippet is still fine. If you change a snippet's options after editing its code, the options go to the code as variables named like GEEKLET_PARAM_DATE.

Quintlet Types

Every quintlet has one of six types, chosen when you create it. The type can't be changed afterward, because a command, a script, a file, a picture, and a web page each work differently; to use another type, add a new quintlet.

Shell

Runs a Terminal command on a timer and shows what it prints. ANSI colors are kept. Commands stop after 30 seconds and show at most 64 KB of output. A command must print its answer and then finish: programs that keep running or draw their own screen, such as top, htop, watch, tail -f, or ping without -c, cannot be shown. Quint tells you this right away and suggests what to use instead (for example top -l 2 -n 10 -o cpu -stats pid,command,cpu,mem | tail -11, or the Top (live) snippet). To keep a command updating in real time, set Refresh to 0 or click Live: Quint runs it again the moment it finishes, up to about twice a second. Live uses more battery than a timed refresh, so use it only where you need it.

AppleScript

Runs an AppleScript and shows whatever it returns. Good for asking other apps questions, like the current Music track or the next Calendar event. See AppleScript & Permissions.

File

Shows the last lines of a text file, such as a log. Use the optional filter (a regular expression) to keep only matching lines.

Image

Shows a picture on your desktop. Resize the quintlet in Arrange mode (or with W and H on the Layout tab) and the picture scales to fit whatever size you choose.

• Where the picture comes from: a web address, a file on your Mac (Choose Image…), or a whole folder (Choose Folder…) for a slideshow, optionally in random order.
• Pictures that change: a web address is reloaded on the Refresh timer, so cameras, radar maps, and other pictures that update often stay current.
• Scaling: Fit keeps the whole picture, Fill covers the whole box and trims the edges, and Stretch matches the box exactly, whatever its shape.
• Animated GIFs play, so radar loops keep moving.
• Round the corners, add a panel behind a picture, an outline (Stroke) or a drop shadow from the Style tab, and fade it with Transparency.

Web

Shows a live web page on the desktop. Set refresh to 0 if the page updates itself. It can have the same outline and drop shadow as a picture.

Shape

A line or a frame you draw on the desktop to organize it. See Frames & Lines.

Cameras, Radar & Weather

Weather and radar

The Weather snippets include national and local radar (still and animated), a US satellite picture from the National Weather Service and NOAA, a text forecast with your place name, current conditions and the next three days, and sunrise and sunset times. The Cameras & Maps snippets cover traffic cameras, webcams, live web pages, and a view of Earth from space.

Local Radar and Local Radar Loop pick the National Weather Service radar nearest you automatically, using your saved location (see Your Location). The first time you add one, Quint asks where you are. The loop versions show the same maps as moving animations. Radar covers the United States.

Traffic cameras and webcams

1. Open the camera on your state transportation website, or the webcam's own page.
2. Right-click the camera picture and choose Copy Image Address.
3. Add the Traffic Camera or Webcam snippet, then paste the address into the Content tab.
4. Set Refresh to how often the camera updates, commonly 10 to 60 seconds.

If the picture does not appear, the status line under Live Output says why. Some sites only allow a camera to be viewed on their own page; for those, try the Live Web Page snippet instead.

Using Scripts from GeekTool

Quint runs any Terminal command or AppleScript, so most scripts shared by the GeekTool community can be used here.

How to use one

1. Click +, then Shell Quintlet (or AppleScript Quintlet for AppleScript code).
2. Paste the script into the box on the Content tab and click outside it to run it.
3. If it shows an error or nothing at all, the Live Output box underneath explains why.

GeekTool's own types map straight across: Shell to Shell, File to File, Image to Image, and Web to Web. A command that runs a script file, such as osascript ~/script.scpt, works as it always did.

What has changed since then

Scripts from the early GeekTool days often depend on tools or websites that no longer exist. - Programs like lynx are not installed on modern Macs. - Old weather pages and other web services have changed or vanished. The Weather and Radar snippets use current sources. - iTunes is now the Music app. In an old AppleScript, change iTunes to Music. - Some of the classics are already in the Snippets library: date and time formats, now playing, battery, disk space, CPU, network, and headlines.

Stay safe

A script can do anything you can do on your Mac. Read a script before you run it, and only use ones from people you trust. Quintlets you import from a file arrive switched off for the same reason.

The long-running MacRumors thread Your GeekTool scripts is a good place to find ideas.

Date and time codes

The date command builds the clock readouts. Put the codes in quotes after date +. For example date '+%A' gives the day name, date '+%-d' the day number, date '+%B' the month, date '+%-I:%M %p' a 12-hour time, and date '+%H:%M:%S' a 24-hour time with seconds.

Your Location

Some quintlets, such as Local Radar, Weather, and Sunrise & Sunset, need to know where you are. Set it once and they all fill themselves in.

Setting it

• When you add a snippet that needs a location, Quint asks right away.
• A quintlet that needs a location shows a Set Location… button at the top of its Content tab. Until a location is saved it displays a short note saying so.
• You can also choose Set Location… from the Quint menu or the menu bar icon, or use the Location card in Settings.
• A radar whose address is locked to one station (for example one you typed in by hand) shows This radar is fixed to station … with a Use My Location button. Click it and that quintlet follows your saved location from then on.

In the Your Location window, click Use My Location to use Location Services, or type a city, state, or street address and press Search, then pick the match. If Location Services is off for Quint, the window offers Open Location Settings, and searching for an address works without it.

When a location is saved, Quint also finds the nearest National Weather Service radar station (the United States only), so radar quintlets work without you looking up a code. Change the location and every local quintlet updates at once.

Privacy

Your location is stored only on your Mac. A quintlet sends it only to the service its own command or address uses, such as the National Weather Service for radar or wttr.in for weather. Clear removes it.

For your own quintlets

In a command, script, or address, these placeholders are replaced with your saved location each time the quintlet runs: - {lat} and {lon} are your latitude and longitude. - {radar} is the nearest radar station code, such as KENX. - {place} is your place name, ready to use inside a web address. - Shell commands and scripts also get your location as environment variables: $GEEKLET_PLACE (the place name exactly as written, safe even with apostrophes), $GEEKLET_LAT, $GEEKLET_LON, and $GEEKLET_RADAR.

For example, curl -s 'wttr.in/{lat},{lon}?format=3' shows the weather where you are. Quintlets that use a placeholder show the Set Location… button automatically.

Arranging & Groups

Arrange mode

Turn on Arrange in the toolbar or the menu bar menu. Every quintlet shows a dashed outline with its name, position, and size. Drag anywhere on a quintlet to move it, or drag the round handle in its bottom-right corner to resize. Quintlets rise above other windows while you arrange so they are easy to reach.

You can also type exact X, Y, W, and H values on the Layout tab. Positions are measured from the top-left corner of your main display.

Show on Desktop, and deleting

Right-click a quintlet in the list and choose Show on Desktop to arrange just that one: it is outlined, you can drag and resize it, and a Done button appears on it when you are finished. You can also click Done in the banner at the top of the Studio, press Esc, or choose Arrange → Finish Editing on Desktop (⌘.), or use the same item in the menu bar icon's menu. Arrange → Show Selected Quintlet on Desktop does the same. Clicking a quintlet in the Studio list does this automatically, so it is ready to drag; turn that off in Settings → General if you prefer.

Every quintlet in the Studio list has a trash button after its on/off switch, and while arranging, every quintlet on the desktop has a red trash button in its corner. It asks first, and Arrange → Undo Delete Quintlet brings back the last one you deleted.

To start fresh, choose Tidy Up → Delete All Quintlets… (also in the Arrange menu and the menu bar icon). A warning shows how many will go, and nothing is deleted until you click Delete All. Your groups and settings stay. Undo Delete All brings every quintlet back until you quit or clear again. If you sync Macs, the deletion syncs too.

New quintlets are placed in a free spot on your desktop and open for dragging and resizing right away, so you can put them where you want. Click Done (on the quintlet or in the banner at the top of the Studio) or press Esc when you are finished.

Working with groups

• New Group (bottom of the list) creates a group and asks for its name.
• Drag a quintlet by its row and drop it on a group, even an empty one, to move it. Or right-click it and choose Move to Group. Its place on the desktop does not change.
• Rename: double-click a group's name, or use its ⋯ menu. Delete Group… is in the same menu; the quintlets inside move to another group, they are not deleted.
• Click a group's name to choose it: new snippets and quintlets are added to the chosen group.
• Collapse a group in the list with the arrow beside its name (the number shows how many quintlets are inside). The ⋯ menu has Collapse All and Expand All. This only tidies the list; it doesn't hide anything on the desktop.
• Hide or show a whole group: click HIDE (or the eye) beside the group's name, or choose Hide Group from Desktop in its ⋯ menu. Every quintlet in the group disappears from the desktop and the list dims. Nothing is deleted or stopped from your settings, and SHOW brings them all back. The menu bar icon also lists the current scene's groups with a switch.
• The group's ⋯ menu also has Group Transparency, Move to Scene, Style All, Paste Style, Share and Export for just that group.

Select several and move them together

While arranging, ⇧-click quintlets to add them to a selection (or take them out). Selected quintlets get a solid white outline. Then drag any one of them and they all move, snapping as one block. ⌘A selects every quintlet on the desktop (click a quintlet first), Esc clears the selection, the arrow keys nudge it (hold ⇧ for 10 points), and Delete removes it after asking. A plain click on a quintlet selects just that one. ⌘Z undoes your last drag, resize or nudge and ⇧⌘Z redoes it (click a quintlet first, so Quint knows you mean the desktop). Arrange → Undo and Redo in the menu do the same, and go back up to 50 steps.

Snapping

While you drag or resize in Arrange mode, quintlets click into place when they get close to something: - Other quintlets: edges and centers line up, and a quintlet sits beside a neighbor with the same gap Tidy Up uses. - Screen edges: quintlets stop at the screen margin, so they line up with a Tidy Up grid. - A grid, if you turn it on in Settings.

A thin dashed line shows what a quintlet snapped to. Hold ⌘ while dragging to turn snapping off for that drag. Resizing snaps the right and bottom edges the same way. In Settings → Arranging you can turn snapping off, choose what it snaps to, set how close counts as near, and hide the guide lines.

Box and text: three ways to size a text quintlet

On the Layout tab, choose Box follows text, Text scales to box, or Fixed (may clip).

• Box follows text (the default): Text quintlets (Shell, AppleScript, and File) fit their size to their text automatically, so a bigger font or a longer line never gets cut off. Lines are never wrapped; the box simply grows or shrinks to match, anchored at its top-left corner.

• Text scales to box: when you drag the resize handle, the quintlet switches to this. The text shrinks or grows as you drag, live, so all of it always fits the box and nothing is cut off. Make the box wider or taller and the text gets bigger.

• Fixed (may clip): the box and the text size are both fixed. A quintlet whose text no longer fits shows an orange CLIPPED tag in Arrange mode, and the Layout tab shows a warning with a Fit to Text button.

To go back to the box following the text, pick Box follows text, or click Fit to Text on a clipped quintlet. To turn it back on for every text quintlet at once, use Fit All Text Quintlets to Their Text in the Tidy Up menu or the Arrange menu.

Tidy Up

When quintlets are scattered, click Tidy Up in the toolbar (or use the Arrange menu in the menu bar, or the Quint menu bar icon) and choose how to arrange them. Everything snaps into a grid on your main display straight away: - By Type puts Shell, AppleScript, File, Image, and Web quintlets in their own rows. - By Group gives each group its own row, in the order the groups are listed. - By Name lines everything up alphabetically. - By Size puts the biggest quintlets first.

Sizes never change; only positions do. Rows wrap at the edge of your screen, and a note appears if some quintlets would run past the bottom. Not what you wanted? Choose Undo Tidy Up to put every quintlet back exactly where it was. You can still nudge individual quintlets afterward with Arrange.

Groups

Groups let you show or hide a set of quintlets together, such as Work and Weekend. Use the eye icon beside a group name, or the group toggles in the menu bar menu. Right-click a group to rename or delete it. Deleted groups hand their quintlets to the next group.

Keep on top

Quintlets normally sit behind your windows and icons. Turn on Keep on top of other windows on the Layout tab for one that should stay in front.

Frames & Lines

Use frames and lines to organize your desktop: a border around a block of quintlets, or a divider between sections.

Draw one

Choose + → Draw a Frame… or Draw a Line… (also in the Arrange menu and the menu bar icon). The screen dims slightly: drag a box around what you want framed, or drag along where the line should go. Press Esc to cancel. When you let go the new frame or line is ready on the desktop with its handles showing; click Done when it is where you want it.

You can also add them from Snippets (Line Divider and Frame, under Utilities).

Adjust it

• Move and resize: use Arrange, or Show on Desktop, like any quintlet. Frames and lines can be made thin.
• Content tab: choose Horizontal or Vertical for a line, the Thickness, and the Style (solid, dashed or dotted). For a frame, the Rounded Corners slider goes from square to a pill.
• Style tab: the Color, Transparency, and for a frame an optional Fill color and opacity.
• A frame sits just behind other quintlets, so whatever is inside it can still be dragged and clicked.

In Arrange mode, frames and lines have orange selection boxes, so you can tell them from regular quintlets, which are blue.

Scenes

A scene is a whole desktop layout. Only one scene shows at a time, so you can have one with just fun things, one with Mac stats, one for work, and switch between them. Inside a scene you still use groups as before.

Switch scenes

• The scene tabs at the top of the Studio list: click one to put it on the desktop. Everything in the other scenes disappears and stops running.
• The menu bar icon's Scene menu, or Scene in the menu bar (⌥⌘1, ⌥⌘2 and so on).
• AppleScript: switch to scene "Fun".

Make and manage scenes

• Click + beside the tabs to make a new scene. Double-click a tab, or right-click it, to rename or delete it. Deleting a scene never deletes quintlets: its groups move to another scene.
• New quintlets and groups are added to the scene on the desktop.
• Move things between scenes: drag a quintlet from the list onto a scene tab, or right-click it and choose Move to Scene (it leaves the list and shows up when you switch to that scene). Right-click a group and choose Move to Scene.
• Each quintlet keeps its own position, so every scene is its own arrangement, and different scenes can use the same spots.

Fading between scenes

When you switch scenes, the old scene's quintlets fade out quickly and the new scene's fade in. The same happens when you show or hide a group. Turn it off in Settings → General (Fade quintlets in and out when scenes or groups change) if you prefer an instant switch.

Show in every scene

For a clock or divider line you want everywhere: right-click the quintlet and choose Show in Every Scene, or tick it on the Layout tab.

Good to know

• Tidy Up and Fit All work on the scene you are looking at. Style All lets you choose this scene or every scene.
• Scenes are kept on each Mac. Sync shares quintlets and groups, so a synced group lands in the first scene on your other Mac until you move it.
• Your existing groups all start in a scene called Main.

Fonts, Color & Transparency

The Style tab shows a live preview at the top, and changes appear on your desktop immediately.

Transparency

Transparency fades the whole quintlet, including pictures and web pages, from solid (0%) to nearly see-through (90%).

Text

• Font opens a searchable list where every font is shown in its own typeface. Turn on Monospaced only for fonts that keep columns lined up. Use the menu beside it to choose bold, italic, and other styles.
• Size, Color, and Align work as you would expect. With Box follows text (the default), the quintlet grows to fit a bigger size, so nothing is cut off. Text opacity fades only the letters.
• Letter space and Line space open up or tighten the text.

Colors a command prints

Some snippets color their own text, such as green for good news and red for warnings in Weather Alerts, Stock Ticker and the sports scores. Those colors win over the Color setting. If you want your own color everywhere, untick Use the colors the command prints under the Color control, and every word uses your color (the Style tab explains this when it applies).

Effects

Choose Shadow, Glow, or Outline, then set its color and strength. Shadow also has an offset. A glow that matches the text color is easy to read on dark wallpapers.

Copy and paste a style

Get one quintlet looking right, then reuse that look. On the Style tab click Copy Style, select another quintlet, and click Paste Style. You can also right-click a quintlet in the list for Copy Style and Paste Style, use the Arrange menu in the menu bar, or right-click a group and choose Paste Style to Whole Group to restyle every quintlet in it at once.

A style covers the font, size, color, alignment, spacing, effect, background, and transparency. It never changes what a quintlet shows or where it sits. The copied style is remembered even after you quit Quint.

Default font for new quintlets

Open Settings → New Quintlets and turn on Use my own font (and Use my own text color if you like). Every text quintlet you add after that starts with your font and color, whether it comes from a snippet or a blank quintlet. Sizes stay as each snippet sets them, so a big clock stays big. Quintlets you already have are not changed; use Style All Quintlets to restyle those.

Pulse

On the Style tab, turn on Pulse in and out and the quintlet breathes between solid and faded. Speed is pulses per second (0.5 is one slow breath every two seconds, 3 is a rapid flutter) and Strength is how far it fades. It works on text, pictures, frames and lines, and it holds still while you arrange the quintlet. It combines with the quintlet's own transparency and its group's fade.

Fade a whole group

Click the half-moon icon beside a group's name (or right-click the group → Group Transparency…) and drag the slider. Every quintlet in the group fades together, on top of its own transparency: a quintlet at 20% fade in a group faded 50% shows at 40%, and one at 0% shows at 50%. Their differences are kept, and setting the group back to 0 restores everything. A quintlet's own Style tab tells you how visible it really is. To make them all the same instead, use Style All.

Restyle everything at once

Choose Tidy Up → Style All Quintlets… (also in the Arrange menu, or Style All in Group… on a group). Tick what to change (font, text color, size, effect, text opacity, background), choose all text quintlets or one group, and click Apply. For example, tick Font and Text color to make every quintlet Helvetica and green. Anything unticked stays as it is, and each quintlet keeps its own bold or italic. Undo Style All is in the same menus.

Stroke and drop shadow for pictures and web pages

On the Style tab of a picture (radar, camera, satellite) or web quintlet, turn on Add an outline and choose its color and width. It follows the Corners setting, so rounded corners give a rounded outline.

Turn on Add a drop shadow to put a shadow behind it: choose its color, blur and offset. The picture shrinks slightly inside its box to leave room for the shadow, so make the box a little larger if you need to. Text quintlets use Effects instead.

Background

Give a quintlet a panel behind it with a color, Fill opacity, rounded Corners, and Padding. With Fill opacity at 0 there is no panel.

AppleScript & Permissions

An AppleScript quintlet shows the text its script returns. For example, ending a script with return "Hello" shows Hello.

The first time a script talks to another app, macOS asks whether Quint may control it. Choose OK. You can review these choices in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation. If you decline, the quintlet shows the error in the Live Output box instead of failing silently.

Files and folders

File quintlets and Shell commands that read protected places, such as Mail or Safari data, may need Full Disk Access in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Most everyday files do not.

Edits apply safely

Changes to a command or script apply when you click out of the box or press ⌘↩, never while you are half-way through typing it.

Sharing Quintlets

Send your quintlets to friends, or use theirs. One small file, ending in .quintlet (older .geeklet files still open), can hold a single quintlet, a whole group, or your entire desktop.

Sending

• Share… sends a quintlet with the Mac share sheet: AirDrop, Messages, Mail, and more. Find it on the Layout tab, or right-click a quintlet in the list.
• Export… saves the same file wherever you like, for GitHub, a download link, or a USB drive.
• Right-click a group for Share Group… and Export Group…. In the + menu, Share All Quintlets… and Export All Quintlets… send your whole setup.
• Your saved location is never included. Quintlets that use it, such as Local Radar, fill in with the location of whoever opens them.
• A quintlet that points at a picture or folder on your own Mac will not find it on someone else's, so share addresses on the web instead.

Receiving

Double-click a .quintlet file, drop it on the Studio window or the Quint icon in the Dock, or choose Import Quintlets… from the + menu.

A review screen opens first and nothing is added until you press Add. For each quintlet it shows what kind it is, any websites it contacts, whether it uses your location, and, under See what it runs, the exact command or address. Cancel adds nothing.

Staying safe

A shell command or AppleScript can do anything you can do on your Mac. Quintlets that run code start switched off; read what they run and turn on only the ones you trust. Keep Code Off adds everything but leaves the code quintlets off. Only open Quintlet files from people you trust.

Settings & Appearance

Open Settings… from the Quint menu (⌘,), the menu bar icon, or the gear button in the Studio toolbar.

Appearance

Choose System, Light, or Dark. System follows macOS; Light and Dark force a look for every Quint window, menu, and panel. Your quintlets on the desktop are not affected; they use the colors you set in their Style tab.

General

• Launch Quint at login starts Quint, and your desktop quintlets, whenever you log in.
• Open the Studio when Quint starts turns the Studio window on or off at launch. Turn it off to have Quint start quietly with just your quintlets and the menu bar icon.
• Open a quintlet on the desktop when I choose it in the list makes clicking a quintlet in the Studio open it for dragging and resizing. Turn it off if you only want to edit its settings.
• Show the menu bar icon hides or shows the icon. With it hidden, open Quint again from Applications to reach the Studio.

New Quintlets

Turn on Use my own font and Use my own text color to start every new text quintlet with them. Sizes stay as each snippet sets them, and quintlets you already have are not changed. See Fonts, Color & Transparency.

Memory

Shows how much memory Quint is using, the same number Activity Monitor lists. It also appears in the Studio's bottom bar (RAM). The card breaks out the pictures Quint is holding, since animated radar loops keep every frame and cost the most, and counts text quintlets and web pages. Web pages run in their own WebKit processes, which Activity Monitor shows separately. Quintlets in a hidden scene or group stop running and free their pictures. Quint also hands unused memory back to macOS every couple of minutes, and Free Up Memory does it right now.

Location

Shows the place Quint uses for local weather, radar, and sunrise quintlets, with Set Location…, Change…, and Clear. See Your Location.

Sync

Keeps your quintlets, groups, Appearance, and Tidy Up spacing in step across your Macs through a folder. See Syncing Your Macs.

Arranging

Turn snapping on or off and choose what quintlets snap to (other quintlets, screen edges, a grid), how close counts as near, and whether guide lines show. The screen margin and space between are used by both snapping and Tidy Up.

Updates and support

Turn automatic update checks on or off, check right now, and see your version and build. The Buy Me a Coffee button is here too.

Syncing Your Macs

Use Quint on more than one Mac and keep them in step. Quint shares one small file through a folder that your Macs already sync, such as iCloud Drive, Google Drive, or Dropbox. There is no account to create.

Turning it on

Open Settings and find the Sync card. Click Use iCloud Drive, Use Google Drive, or Use Dropbox (whichever this Mac has), or Choose Another Folder…. Quint creates a Quint Sync folder there (if an older Geeklet Sync folder is already there, it keeps using that one). Do the same on your other Macs, choosing the same folder.

When a Mac joins a folder that already has quintlets, Quint asks what to do. Use the Synced Quintlets replaces this Mac's quintlets with the shared ones. Merge Both keeps this Mac's quintlets and adds the shared ones, matching groups that have the same name.

What syncs

• Your quintlets: their commands, addresses, fonts, colors, effects, refresh settings, and groups.
• Appearance and the Tidy Up spacing (you can turn this off).

What stays on each Mac

• Positions and sizes. Your Macs probably have different screens, so each Mac keeps its own layout. A quintlet that arrives from another Mac is placed in a free spot, which you can move with Arrange or Tidy Up.
• Which quintlets are switched on, which groups are shown, which scenes you have and which one is showing, any group fade, and your saved location. A group that arrives from another Mac lands in your first scene until you move it.
• Launch at login and the menu bar icon.

Commands from another Mac need your approval

A shell command or AppleScript runs on the Mac that has it. When one arrives from another Mac, or is changed there, Quint holds it and shows Review Sync in the Studio toolbar. The review screen shows what it was and what it is now. Apply the ones you expect; skipped ones stay as they are on this Mac and are not offered again until they change. Pictures, web pages, and style changes apply right away. You can turn the approval step off in Settings, but only do that if you trust everything that can write to the sync folder.

How edits are combined

The newest edit to a quintlet wins, so keep your Macs' clocks set automatically. Edit different quintlets on different Macs and both changes are kept. Deleting a quintlet on one Mac removes it from the others, and it will not come back. Quint checks for changes about every 20 seconds and when you switch back to the app. Sync Now checks straight away.

If something looks wrong

• Last synced in Settings shows when it last worked. An orange message means the folder could not be read, often because the cloud service is not running or is still downloading the file.
• A damaged sync file is never overwritten. Fix or replace the file and syncing resumes by itself.
• Stop Syncing disconnects this Mac and leaves the shared file in the folder.

Controlling Quint with AppleScript

Quint has its own AppleScript dictionary, so Script Editor, Shortcuts, and other apps can drive it. In Script Editor choose File → Open Dictionary… and pick Quint to see everything.

Commands

• refresh all: re-run every quintlet now.
• list quintlets: the names of all your quintlets.
• add snippet "Big Time": add a ready-made snippet to the desktop (use its name from the Snippets library).
• show quintlet "Weather": highlight one quintlet for dragging and resizing.
• quintlet output "Battery": the text a quintlet is showing right now.
• set quintlet enabled "Weather" to false: hide or show one quintlet.
• delete quintlet "Weather": delete one (Arrange → Undo Delete Quintlet brings it back).
• list scenes, switch to scene "Fun", new scene "Work", and the property current scene.
• open studio: bring the Studio window forward.
• arrange mode: a property you can read or set, for example set arrange mode to true.

Example

tell application "Quint"
    add snippet "Countdown"
    set arrange mode to true
end tell

The first time another app controls Quint, macOS asks you to allow it under Privacy & Security → Automation.

Updates & Support

Choose Check for Updates… from the Quint menu, the menu bar icon, Settings, or the About Quint window. Quint uses Sparkle to check a signed update feed, so every update is verified before it is installed. When one is available, Quint shows what is new and installs it with one click. Your quintlets and settings are kept. About Quint shows your version and build number.

Releases are published on GitHub, where you can also download the latest version by hand.

Quint is tip-supported. You can download and use it without a required payment; if you like the software, a tip through Buy Me a Coffee helps support its development. Buy Me a Coffee… is in the Quint menu, the menu bar icon, Settings, and About, and opens the same support page used by XTicker and CamDeck: buymeacoffee.com/hitthedecksoftware.

Troubleshooting

A quintlet is blank

Open its Content tab and look at Live Output. The colored badge shows OK with how long the last run took, an EXIT number if the command failed, or STOPPED if it took longer than 30 seconds. Press Run Now to try again.

A command like top shows nothing

Some commands never finish, because they run until you press a key. A quintlet needs a command that prints something and ends. Quint explains this in the quintlet and in Live Output, and the badge reads NEEDS A ONE-SHOT COMMAND or STOPPED AFTER 30S. For top, use a snapshot such as top -l 2 -n 10 -o cpu -stats pid,command,cpu,mem | tail -11, then click Live on the Content tab (or set Refresh to 0) so it updates in real time, or add the Top (live) snippet. For ping, add -c 1. For a log, use a File quintlet instead of tail -f.

I cannot see a quintlet

• Check which scene is showing (the tabs above the list): a quintlet only shows in its own scene unless it is set to show in every scene.
• Check its switch in the list, and that its group's eye icon is on. A group faded with Group Transparency can be hard to see.
• Click Arrange to reveal its outline. If it sits off-screen, set X and Y on the Layout tab.
• Quintlets sit behind other windows. Use Keep on top, or click the desktop to see them.

Fit to text does nothing

Fit to text resizes the box to match its text. Choose Box follows text on the Layout tab, or click Fit to Text on a clipped quintlet, and it resizes straight away, even in Arrange mode. When you leave Arrange mode, boxes set to fit catch up with their text.

I moved something by mistake

While arranging, press ⌘Z (click a quintlet first) or use Arrange → Undo. It remembers your last 50 drags, resizes and nudges. Deleted quintlets come back with Undo Delete Quintlet.

Start fresh

Quit Quint, then move ~/Library/Application Support/Geeklet/geeklets.json out of the way. Quint recreates its starter quintlets on the next launch. If that file ever cannot be read, Quint saves a copy beside it instead of overwriting it.