Introducing TerminalWidget

I’ve always wanted a personal dashboard that actually stays out of the way. Not another browser tab. Not a full-screen monitoring app. Just the numbers and status I care about — sales, transfer speeds, uptime, whether that long-running script is still chewing — available the moment I look.

For years that meant juggling terminal windows, sticky notes, and half-forgotten browser bookmarks. The data was there. Getting it onto the glass without ceremony was the hard part.

Dashboard nostalgia, modern widgets

macOS Desktop Widgets scratched that itch in a way that felt familiar — a little like the old Dashboard days, when you could keep glanceable stuff floating around your workspace. Except this time it’s first-class: on the desktop on Mac, and on the Home Screen on iPhone and iPad.

So I built TerminalWidget: a universal app that lets you push text, charts, progress, images, and tables into widgets from the tools you already use — the command line, Shortcuts, AppleScript, or a URL scheme.

What it does

You pick named targets (widget1, sales, backup, whatever) and drop widgets on the Mac desktop or iOS Home Screen pointed at those IDs. Then you update them however you like:

terminal-widget --target sales --text "Today: $1,240" --icon "dollarsign.circle"

Or from Shortcuts. Or from a script that already runs on a schedule. Same targets, same payloads — charts included:

terminal-widget --target speeds \
  --chart "12 18 22 19 31 28 40" \
  --chart-format sparkline \
  --title "Download" \
  --caption

Progress and status work the same way — perfect for backups, deploys, sync jobs, or anything that can spit out a percentage or a short status line.

Why this clicked for me

I don’t want a dashboard I have to open. I want one I can see by spreading my fingers on the trackpad (Mission Control / desktop overview — whatever your muscle memory is) or by flipping to the Home Screen widgets on my phone.

TerminalWidget updates instantly on macOS. With iCloud sync there’s a short…