gryzle / dynamic-island-sketchybar

Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro implementation on Mac using Sketchybar

Dynamic Island on macOS using SketchyBar

Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro implementation on Mac using SketchyBar

NOTE: Majority of the code are hardcoded. This is my first time making a project using Shell Scripts. Some features require constantly rewriting a file instead of relying on a event system. With that being said, I have yet experienced a large impact on performance on my machine. This project is yet to be used daily and be functional. It's more of a concept.

Table of Contents

Installation

Updating

Optimal Setup

Configuration

Features

Todo

Bugs

FAQ

Credits

Installation

Requirements

• Homebrew
• SketchyBar
• sf-symbols (brew install --cask sf-symbols)
• biplist (pip3 install biplist) (only required for notification feature)

Getting Started (If you're not using SketchyBar already)

Clone the repository inside ~/.config/sketchybar/plugins, take the default sketchybarrc and restart sketchybar,

mkdir -p ~/.config/sketchybar/plugins
cd ~/.config/sketchybar/plugins
git clone https://github.com/crissNb/Dynamic-Island-Sketchybar.git
mv Dynamic-Island-Sketchybar/sketchybarrc.example ../sketchybarrc
brew services restart sketchybar

NOTE: There appears to be a bug that dynamic island helper program does not run the first time it is installed (after restarting sketchybar). If this is the case, simply restart sketchybar once again by typing in brew services restart sketchybar once again.

For existing SketchyBar users

Add this line of code to the beginning of your sketchybarrc file.

PLUGIN_DIR="$HOME/.config/sketchybar/plugins"
source "$PLUGIN_DIR/Dynamic-Island-Sketchybar/config.sh"

Add this line of code alongside your other items

source "$PLUGIN_DIR/Dynamic-Island-Sketchybar/item.sh"

You can to adjust default settings with sketchybar --default. See sketchybarrc.example of this repository for example on how to set up Dynamic-Island-Sketchybar.

Updating

Just go into the Dynamic-Island-Sketchybar and pull the changes.

cd ~/.config/sketchybar/plugins/Dynamic-Island-Sketchybar
git pull

Optimal Setup

I highly suggest you to use SketchyBar and the dynamic island config files with Yabai.

If you have been using the macOS's default menu bar, I suggest you to enable the "Automatically hide and show the menu bar" option (located in System Preferences -> Dock & Menu Bar) and completely relying on the SketchyBar to handle the macOS menu. This repository only includes the SketchyBar configuration for Dynamic Island plugin. See my dotfiles or Sketchybar setups for preconfigured SketchyBar setups to fully replace macOS menu bar. *If you are using my dotfiles for sketchybar, dynamic island is already included in the dotfiles. Otherwise, you will need to repeat the process above. Also see "For existing SketchyBar users".

If you prefer to use the macOS's default menu bar, you need to enable P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_TOPMOST option to "on" (see configuration).

Configuration

Copy ~/.config/sketchybar/plugins/Dynamic-Island-Sketchybar/userconfig.sh to ~/.config/sketchybar/userconfig.sh. This can be done with the following command:

cp ~/.config/sketchybar/plugins/Dynamic-Island-Sketchybar/userconfig.sh ~/.config/sketchybar/userconfig.sh

You can see all the default values included in the file already, you can delete the options you don't want to modify.

By default, dynamic island will take input from Apple Music. If you would like to use Spotify instead, change P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_MUSIC_SOURCE variable in userconfig.sh to "Spotify" instead.

As of right now, users need to manually adjust the notch size in pixels. If you have found an optimal notch size for MacBook with a notch, please let me know. Once enough data has been gathered, preset system will be implemented.

The default configuration values are meant for 2021 MacBook Pro 14.

Disabling features

Set the option for the island you want to disable to 0 in your userconfig.sh

P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_MUSIC_ENABLED=0
P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_APPSWITCH_ENABLED=0
P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_NOTIFICATION_ENABLED=0
P_DYNAMIC_ISLAND_VOLUME_ENABLED=0

Features

The following table describes the capabilities of this dynamic island project (working islands). Some islands do not work properly just yet. Thus, you may experience some glitches when using them.

	General Notifications	Volume/Brightness	Music	Pause/Resume	App Switch
Cache File	no	no	yes*	yes	no
Event System?	no	no	yes	yes	yes
How well does it work?	5/5	4/5	5/5	4/5	5/5
Known Bugs	None	- Animation bug when volume changes multiple times while the UI is active	None	- Animation bug when play / pause happens multiple times while the UI is active	None
Screenshot

*saves the artwork 'temporarily' (this artwork file is then replaced with a newer artwork file, if requested) to display it on the dynamic island.

Some features (islands) rely on making a "cache" file inside of a SketchyBar config directory.

Recommended Features

For General Notification feature, I suggest you to turn on the "Do Not Disturb" on your macOS settings. This way the notifications will only be shown via the dynamic island. Notifications are currently DISABLED. It was originally written in Python and will be replaced with C helper program.

If you would like to purely rely on the dynamic island interface for your audio (and brightness coming soon) levels, type the following command in terminal:

launchctl unload -F /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OSDUIHelper.plist

This requires you to disable system integrity protection (SIP).

Todo

• Make GitHub Wiki
• Hide the notch on non-notched laptops
• Less hardcoded system...

Upcoming Features / Upcoming Islands

• Lock / Unlock
• Bluetooth status
• Do not disturb
• ...and more!

Bugs

If you encounter any bugs, feel free to open up an issue!

Contributing

Pull requests are also welcome.

The following terms/system may be relevant when looking at the code:

There are mainly three parts of this implementation of dynamic island: dynamic island item, dynamic island helper (written in C, communicates with sketchybar) and island scripts (written in shell script)

The dynamic island has its own event items. These event items are subscribed to sketchybar's specific events, e.g. "volume event", "brightness event", etc. These event items will cast a trigger called dynamic_island_queue with environment variables provided (details).

The dynamic island helper receives a trigger dynamic_island_queue and processes the islands in a queue (first come, first serve). An item from the queue gets removed when the dynamic island item is not handling any islands. To remove an item from the dynamic island queue, the dynamic island helper program calls another trigger, di_helper_listener_event with environment variables that describe the island (i.e. identifier of the island, args). This event will then call process.sh, which will then call the correct island from island scripts depending on the environment variables provided.

The island scripts also contain delays and get automatically reset (reset.sh) after a set amount of duration. After reset.sh script runs, the island item's process is finished.

When an island item finishes its process, it tells the helper program to process the next item in the queue.

Tested devices

• 2021 MacBook Pro 14

FAQ

Q: Can I use this on MacBook without a notch?

A: Yes, it should work, using this config will create a notch on your device.

Q: Can I use this with multi monitors?

A: It's possible, but there will be a notch on all displays. The dynamic island will only appear on one active display, though. This project is not intended to be used with multiple monitors.

Credits

Base sketchybarrc was taken from FelixKratz's dotfiles.

Python script to get all notifications from the macOS's database.