Originally published at: AppBITS: TerminalWidget Turns Scripted Output into Visual Widgets - TidBITS
One of the core tenets of this AppBITS column is that I can use it to write about apps that I think some of you may like, even if they aren’t likely to make their way into my everyday use. TerminalWidget from Brett Terpstra falls squarely (squircley?) into that category because while I’m enthralled by its premise, I can’t imagine how I would use it.
TerminalWidget’s goal in life is to render desktop widgets using output from command line apps running in Terminal, Shortcuts automations, AppleScript scripts, or even custom terminalwidget:// URLs. With it, you can have a script or shortcut update a widget with its progress or report its results to a widget, providing a lightweight graphical interface to the otherwise text-only command line. Even cooler, the widgets can be on the Mac or—with communication via iCloud—on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. You can configure widgets to provide a wide variety of looks and assign actions to execute on a click or tap.
I rarely use the command line and don’t create much with Shortcuts or AppleScript, so I haven’t been able to think of any examples where TerminalWidget might prove useful to me. Luckily, the TerminalWidget website includes a page of recipes, which are community-contributed scripts and shortcuts for TerminalWidget. While nearly all are currently from Terpstra himself, any TerminalWidget user can submit theirs. I suspect most will be useful primarily as templates for users who want something similar.
Script examples report on LAN performance, show Time Machine state and progress during backups, and track Mac App Store downloads and revenue from AppFigures. Fewer Shortcuts examples are available at the moment, but one shows how to make a widget with the current local temperature from Weather, and others track GitHub contributions.
As you might expect, TerminalWidget is somewhat involved to set up and configure, but Terpstra has written extensive documentation to help you get started with the command line, Shortcuts, AppleScript, and URL calls. To get TerminalWidget working from the command line, I had to resort to asking ChatGPT for step-by-step instructions, but that’s more a criticism of my command line chops than any issue with TerminalWidget. With AI assistance, I managed to get the Network Speed History Chart script working and tweaked it a bit. (And I later learned that even Terpstra uses his AI agent to help turn his data into widgets.)
Put simply, TerminalWidget is aimed at developers, sysadmins, and the sort of people who don’t think twice about whipping up a quick shell script. If that’s you, you’re probably already coming up with ideas for how TerminalWidget could provide a visual interface for something that was otherwise squirreled away within Terminal. It’s $19.99 and includes the Mac, iPhone/iPad, and Apple Watch apps.