iData

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What iData is

iData is a lightweight, native macOS 14+ front end for VisiData. It lets you open a large table from Finder and work with it through an embedded terminal while preserving VisiData's commands, shortcuts, and loaders.

VisiData is an external dependency and is not bundled with iData. If iData cannot find vd, it stays on the welcome screen and shows installation guidance instead of opening an empty terminal. A nonstandard vd executable can be selected in Preferences > VisiData Runtime.

Install

1. Install iData

brew install --cask laleoarrow/tap/idata

Upgrade later with:

brew upgrade --cask laleoarrow/tap/idata

2. Install VisiData

The recommended setup keeps VisiData and common optional loaders in one isolated environment:

pipx install visidata
pipx inject visidata openpyxl pyxlsb xlrd zstandard

Homebrew is also supported:

brew install visidata

If a Homebrew installation needs extra loaders, install them in the same Python environment used by vd.

File handling

Files selected with iData's Open command go directly to VisiData. For files sent to iData by Finder, uncompressed files up to 100 MiB are handed to a preferred desktop app (WPS Office, then Microsoft Excel by default); larger files open in iData. This handoff app is configurable in Preferences.

Gzip-like inputs (.gz, .bgz, and .bgzf) always stay in iData: their decompressed bytes are streamed to VisiData without creating an extracted copy.

Common examples include csv, tsv, json, jsonl, xlsx, ma, bed.bgz, csv.gz, and files with uncommon suffixes.

Updates

iData uses Sparkle 2 for in-app updates.

• Release assets are published on GitHub Releases.
• The update feed is stored at docs/appcast.xml for GitHub Pages hosting.
• A published GitHub release can trigger .github/workflows/sync-homebrew-cask.yml to update laleoarrow/homebrew-tap when HOMEBREW_TAP_TOKEN is configured.

Development

Run the test and Debug-build checks:

swift test
xcodebuild -project iData.xcodeproj -scheme iDataApp -configuration Debug \
  -clonedSourcePackagesDirPath .build/SourcePackages \
  -derivedDataPath .build/xcode-debug build

Build the installable app:

./scripts/build_app.sh

Package release assets:

./scripts/package_release.sh <version>

The app bundle is written to dist/iData.app; packaged installers use names such as dist/iData-v<version>-macos-universal.dmg and dist/iData-v<version>-macos-universal.pkg.