osx-overlay

Note

OSX version based on x11-overlay for linux.

This is a tiny program that displays the content of text files as an overlay on your desktop.
Its goal is simplicity, a non-distracting visualization and especially it should not interfere with user interactions targeting the underlying content.

It is designed as a front-end tool to show alarms or the health status of any system. To do so, just write your custom script that generates and updates a text file with the information you want to be displayed. Use this file as input for osx-overlay and that's it. But of course, it's absolutely not limited to alarming dashboards. Be creative!

Features

• Simple and easy to use text input files (WYSIWYG)
• Don't disturb (not in taskbar nor in task-switcher)
• Don't interfere UI (delegate all user interactions to underlying elements)
• Screen selection for multi-monitor setup
• Colorized text, change font type or size with Ansi Escape Sequences.
  Supported are the well known color formats for 3-4bit, 8bit and 24bit as well as the alternative font selection sequence (see SGR).

Installation

Dependencies

$> brew install cmake

Compile

debug

cmake -B cmake-build-debug -G Ninja
cmake --build cmake-build-debug
./cmake-build-debug/osx-overlay-debug

release

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -B cmake-build-release -G Ninja
cmake --build cmake-build-release
./cmake-build-release/osx-overlay

Usage

usage: osx-overlay [OPTIONS] <INPUT_FILE>

  -c, --config=FILE       file path to read configuration from
  -h, --help              prints this help text
  -v, --verbose           be verbose and print some debug output
  -V, --version           print version number and quit

Positioning:
  -e PIXEL                screen edge spacing in pixels; defaults to '0'
  -l PIXEL                line spacing in pixels; defaults to '0'
  -m INDEX                monitor to use; defaults to '0'
  -o ORIENTATION          orientation to align window and lines; defaults to 'NW'
                          possible values are N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW and CENTER

Font:
  -f, --font-name=FONT,.. font name; defaults to 'NotoSansMono'
  -s, --font-size=SIZE,.. font size; defaults to '12'

Colors:
  -p, --profile=PROFILE   profile for ansi colors; values are VGA or XP
      --fg-color=COLOR    foreground color; defaults to '[97m' (equals '[38;2;255;255;255m')
      --fg-alpha=ALPHA    foreground alpha; defaults to '200'
      --bg-color=COLOR    background color; defaults to '[40m' (equals '[48;2;0;0;0')
      --bg-alpha=ALPHA    background alpha; defaults to '100'

Behavior:
  -d, --dim=PERCENT       dim the text on mouse over; defaults to '75'%
  -D PERCENT              dim the text in general; defaults to '0'%
  -t PIXEL                pixel tolerance for mouse over dimming; defaults to '0'

Fonts

Here is an example how to display the project's ansi logo as an overlay:

• install a nice looking mono space font that supports charset CP437 (e.g. a classic IBM font from int10h.org)
• start osx-overlay using specific font
  $> ./osx-overlay -f "Mx437 IBM VGA 8x16" docs/logo.utf8.ans

Colors

The default foreground text color and the default background color can be set as regular ansi color code (see SGR). For convenience the heading ESC control character can be omitted for option parameters or in the configuration file. The transparency of colors has to be set separately.