On this episode we’re talking with our good friend Mat Ryer whom you may know from the Go Time podcast. Mat created an awesome open source tool for putting just about anything in your Mac’s toolbar. It was originally written in Objective-C, but it just got a big rewrite in Go and abig rename from BitBar to xbar.

If you don’t use a Mac don’t hit skip on this episode quite yet! There are lessons to be learned for anyone interested in hacking on tools to make your life better. Plus, with this rewrite Mat has positioned xbar to go cross-platform, which we talk about as well.

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Featuring:

• Mat Ryer – Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
• Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• The Changelog #3 - Rob Pike
• xbar’s website
• What happens when your old open-source project unexpectedly gets to the top of Hacker News?
• Go Time #154 - Where Jerod shares his unpopular opinion
• Go Time #144 - Building desktop apps with Go + web tech
• Wails.app
• Become a sponsor to Mat Ryer
• xbar on GitHub

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!