Mac menu bar app that watches any part of your screen and alerts you when something changes
Hi everyone! Today I'm introducing ScreenAlert — a tiny Mac menu bar app I built to stop myself from babysitting my screen all day. It watches any region you pick, reads text out loud, and alerts you the moment something changes. I'd love to share it with you and hear what you think. Problem I kept getting stuck staring at my Mac. Waiting for a stock price to hit a target. Refreshing a build dashboard to see if it turned green. Watching a live score because the site had no notifications. If the info was on screen but the app didn't push a notification, I had to keep looking. So I built ScreenAlert. You drag a box around any part of your screen and you can: Have it read the text out loud so you can listen instead of looking (works on any app, even ones with no TTS support) Set a condition ("number greater than 100", "text changed", "image changed") and get pinged when it happens Fire a macOS Shortcut on alert — webhooks, notifications, automations, anything It uses Apple's Vision OCR, so it reads text from literally any app. Everything runs locally. No accounts, no cloud, no telemetry. The text on your screen never leaves your Mac. Comparison TextSniper is great for one-shot OCR grabs, but it stops there. No monitoring, no conditions, no read-aloud, no alerts. ScreenAlert does the OCR part and speaks it and keeps watching the region for you. CleanShot X has OCR baked in too, but it's a screenshot tool first. It won't read selected text aloud or tell you "ping me when this number goes above X". ScreenAlert is built for the watching and listening part — conditions, sounds, voice readouts, Shortcuts triggers, window tracking that follows a window even when it moves behind others. Basically, if the other tools are "read this once", ScreenAlert is "keep an eye on this for me, and read it to me while you're at it". Pricing One-time $4.99 on the Mac App Store. No subscription. No IAP. Buy it once, it's yours. App Store Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/screenalert/id6761373715?mt=12 Get Trial: gtrigonakis.com/s/ScreenAlertTrial.dmg Happy to answer questions or take feature requests. Built it because I needed it, so feedback is welcome.
Collected discussion
Nice concept. Qns: if a window hides some part of an app that I want to track, it will not trigger? Is there a trial version to try?
Yes, if you enable "Window Tracking" option on app settings, app will track the window even if it is hidden by another app. You can download trial from this link https://f004.backblazeb2.com/file/GTApps/ScreenAlertTrial.dmg (trial mode will stop tracking after 2 minutes)
Will tracking be affected when the screensaver activates?
App will keep monitoring the screen even if the screensaver is activated
This sounds cool but downloading a random app that can see my screen from a backblaze link is a bridge too far for me.
Totally valid concern. The app is on the Mac App Store — that's the same binary, sandboxed, notarized, and reviewed by Apple. If you don't want to mess with the dmg. The trial is just for people who want to try before buying. If you do want the trial, here's a direct link from my own domain instead of the Backblaze CDN: http://gtrigonakis.com/s/ScreenAlertTrial.dmg — same file, just hosted under my name so it's easier to verify it's actually from me. The app is signed with my Apple developer ID (Georgios Trigonakis, team 73UVK6498D), so macOS Gatekeeper will check it before launch. Some details on the screen access part: ScreenAlert uses Apple's screen recording permission (you have to explicitly grant it in System Settings), Apple's Vision framework for OCR locally, and never sends anything off your Mac. No accounts, no analytics, no network calls. You can confirm with Little Snitch / LuLu if you want to verify.
Nice, thanks for responding -- I'd only seen the backblaze link and noped out. This feels much less sketchy :) Appreciate the info & fantastic app idea!
Why not putting an order limit?
if your goal is to actually execute a trade at a price, a limit order on your broker is the right tool, not my app. But stock price monitoring is just one use case. You can use the app to get alerts for anything on screen. The stock example is just the easiest one to explain.
Hi, will this work with multiple monitors? i.e., If the portion of the screen/window I want to track is on an external monitor - i.e., I have two screens: the main MacBook screen and an external monitor (or maybe two). Can I select the tracking area on an external monitor, or is it limited to working on the MacBook screen only? If it can handle tracking on external monitors... If, during the tracking period, I disconnect the external monitor, so all those apps now get redistributed to the main MacBook screen and/or any other remaining external monitor, will this still track the relative area of the app (which is now no longer on the disconnected external monitor)? (- just an edge test case I thought of, to see if it could be handled.)
Nice question. Yes can track the screen on any connected monitor. And will still track the selected area of an app window even if disconect monitor and app change screen. You have to enable the "Window Tracking" option on app settings.
I've been on the verge of unsubbing for a while now, this sub just feels like a circle jerk of people selling apps to each other, most of which have almost zero real life utility, but this is an interesting idea.
did the journal factory explode?
Interesting idea. Using the OCR framework for these changes is a lot better than manually checking pixel values!
Wow very good idea, will try it
This is awesome! I love when I find an app I didn’t realize I needed then when I read the description I instantly know I needed it! Thank you for making this!
Will this work with websites as well?
funny funny witty idea! already lov it
Looks good!
Nice concept! I'm somewhat curious what the actual log looks like and how I might utilize it's contents.
Clean
Is there a maximum number of tracking windows that can be set?
This is super cool. I wonder if I could rig it to watch football streams with me and mute during a commercial. That would be amazing
the "fire a Shortcut on alert" part is what gets me. been wanting something exactly like this for CI build status. $4.99 one-time is almost too cheap for what it does honestly
interesting idea. good luck.