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macOS · Menu bar

Tempo

The Dock hides snappier in the morning and calmer at night, on a curve you set yourself

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About Tempo

Tempo is built to move the Dock's auto-hide animation speed with the clock: snappy first thing (0.8x), default through the middle of the day, slower in the evening (1.3x). The curve is yours — control points you set by hour, minute and speed, drawn as a 24-hour graph — or one of four presets: Snappy, Default, Gentle and Balanced. Underneath, it writes com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier and relaunches the Dock, rounding each value to 0.05-second steps so a relaunch only happens when the value actually changes.

Who it's for

Mac users who want their computer to match their energy throughout the day.

What it does

  • Time-based Dock animation speed curve (0.5x–3.0x)
  • Control points set by hour, minute and speed, on a 24-hour graph
  • Presets: Snappy, Default, Gentle, Balanced
  • Linear interpolation between points, wrapping at midnight
  • The Dock relaunches only when the rounded speed changes
  • Pause and resume

Behind the build

Changing the Dock's auto-hide speed means writing com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier and relaunching the Dock with killall Dock, so Tempo rounds each value to 0.05-second steps and relaunches only when it changes.

On the default curve that is about 10 relaunches a day rather than one every minute — once a second apply path added later stops firing every change twice, which it currently does. The curve is linear interpolation between control points, wrapping at midnight.

The full write-upMac Dock animation speed: autohide-time-modifier and killall Dock

Information

Runs on
macOS · Menu bar
Status
Source only
Requires
macOS 13+
Source
Public on GitHub
Telemetry
None
Built with
Swift & SwiftUI
Stack
SwiftUIAppKitdefaults write

Tempo is source only, for now.

The code is public, but there's no packaged release yet. Build it from the repository today, or leave an email and hear when there's one you can double-click.

Tell me when it shipsView source

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