SlackActivityMenu

A tiny macOS menu bar app that mirrors Slack's local activity badge label.

This project is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Slack Technologies, LLC or Salesforce.

It uses Slack's StatusLabel value from LaunchServices and renders it as a compact red badge over a custom black activity mark. This is useful for surfacing Slack activity while the Dock is hidden or out of view.

Download

Download the latest signed and notarized DMG from GitHub Releases.

Open the DMG, drag SlackActivityMenu.app to /Applications, then launch it. Version 0.1.1 and later can check for future updates from the app menu.

What It Is

SlackActivityMenu is a local-only utility. It does not use Slack OAuth, Slack Web API tokens, network calls, or notification scraping. It does use Sparkle to check for app updates from this project's GitHub releases.

The app runs as a menu extra, polls every 5 seconds, and reads:

/usr/bin/lsappinfo info -only StatusLabel com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap

That value is Slack's local activity label. It can be a dot, a count, or empty depending on Slack's own state and preferences. It is not a semantic unread-message API.

Install From Source

cd ~/Code/SlackActivityMenu
make open

The generated app bundle is:

~/Code/SlackActivityMenu/.build/SlackActivityMenu.app

Development

swift test
swift run SlackActivityMenu

Useful make targets:

make build
make test
make app
make package
make dmg
make appcast
make notarize
make open
make clean

Release Builds

Build a local .app bundle:

make app

Build, sign, and zip with a Developer ID Application certificate:

make package

Build and sign a drag-to-Applications disk image:

make dmg

Notarize with an existing notarytool keychain profile:

make notarize

The build scripts generate the app icon, write Info.plist, sign with hardened runtime for release packaging, and produce zip and DMG archives under .build/. make notarize notarizes and staples both the app bundle and release DMG, then generates a Sparkle appcast.xml for the versioned DMG under .build/appcast/.

For repeatable local release settings, copy .release.env.example to .release.env and set your signing identity, notarytool profile, Sparkle account, and optional DMG volume name. .release.env is ignored so credentials and machine-specific profile names are not committed.

If the notary profile is not already configured, create it once:

xcrun notarytool store-credentials notarytool \
  --apple-id [email protected] \
  --team-id TEAMID \
  --password app-specific-password

Sparkle update signing uses an EdDSA private key stored in Keychain. Create or print the matching public key with:

.build/artifacts/sparkle/Sparkle/bin/generate_keys --account com.nicholasritschel.SlackActivityMenu

Do not commit exported Sparkle private keys.

Limitations

• macOS does not provide a public API for reading another app's badge label.
• lsappinfo StatusLabel is a private LaunchServices diagnostic surface.
• Slack must be running and registered with LaunchServices.
• The local value may reflect activity, mentions, DMs, workspace aggregation, Slack preferences, or simply a dot.
• Individual unread item details are not available through this local path.

Without Slack's official API, alternatives such as Accessibility scraping, Notification Center history, or reverse-engineering Slack's Electron storage are brittle and incomplete.

Icon

The menu icon is a custom abstract hash/activity mark drawn by the app. It is not Slack's logo.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.