A menu bar timer for Mac that lives where you're already looking.
Dockling is a native macOS menu bar timer with a live MM:SS countdown next to your clock, configurable focus and break cadences, and a pixel pet that walks during work and curls up during breaks. $2.99 once, no subscription, all data local.
The best menu bar timer app does three things well.
A menu bar timer earns its slot by staying glanceable, never stealing focus, and surviving full-screen apps and Spaces. Here is how Dockling does each of those.
Live MM:SS, every second
The countdown ticks in the menu bar without a popover, a Notification Center widget, or a window. You glance, you see the number, you keep working.
The macos menu bar timer follows you through every Space and every full-screen app, including Final Cut and Xcode.
The pet is the state
Other menu bar timers tell you nothing when you alt-tab away for 20 seconds. Dockling's pet walks during focus and sleeps during breaks, so the state of the timer is visible even when the digits are not the thing you're looking at.
That visible state is the difference between a mac countdown timer menu bar you ignore and one you actually use.
Configurable, not opinionated
Default cadence is 25/5/15 (the classic menu bar pomodoro mac flow), but every duration is editable. Run 50/10 for deep work, 15/3 for laundry, or a single one-shot countdown for an oven timer.
Every completed session writes to a local CSV. The last 500 are kept on disk. No cloud, no account.
How Dockling compares to other menu bar timers.
We use every popular menu bar timer on Mac in rotation. Here is the honest read on where each one is the right choice and where it loses.
Where Tomato 2 wins: free, open source, lightweight, and ships from the Mac App Store with one click. If all you want is a bare 25 minute countdown next to your clock, Tomato 2 is excellent.
Where Dockling wins: Tomato 2 has no configurable cadences, no session history, no notes, and no visible state when the timer is paused. Dockling adds all four plus a pixel pet.
Where Tot and Antinote win: beautiful menu bar clip-style scratchpads, great for jotting meeting notes one keystroke away. Tot's seven dots are iconic for a reason.
Where Dockling wins: neither Tot nor Antinote has a countdown timer at all. If you want both a menu bar timer mac users actually start, and a quick notes bubble for ideas mid-focus, Dockling does both in one app.
What you get: the live MM:SS countdown, configurable focus/break cadences, 500 sessions of CSV history, a menu bar notes bubble, and a pixel pet that walks while you focus and sleeps while you break.
The tradeoff: $2.99 once instead of free. We charge enough to keep the lights on, not enough to make you read pricing pages.
The countdown, at native menu bar scale.
The whole point of a menubar timer mac users keep open is that it fits inside the existing macOS chrome. Dockling renders pixel-perfect at every Retina scale and never opens a window of its own.
Why a menu bar timer beats every other kind.
The history of timer apps on Mac is a slow march away from windows and toward the corner of the screen. The first wave were full-screen Pomodoro apps with giant red digits on a black background. The second wave were menu bar popovers you had to click to read. The current generation, the one Dockling belongs to, puts the countdown directly in the macOS menu bar alongside the clock, the battery, and the Wi-Fi icon.
There is a reason this particular placement keeps winning. The macOS menu bar is the only piece of UI that is visible in every Space, every full-screen app, and every monitor configuration. A countdown that lives there cannot be hidden behind a browser tab or forgotten in a minimized window. It is also the part of the screen your eyes naturally drift to when you look up from your keyboard, which means a glanceable timer there is read four or five times an hour without any effort.
What makes a mac menu bar timer good
The first thing is rendering. A menu bar item that uses a non-native font, or that re-renders the entire bar every second, feels wrong in a way you can't immediately name. Dockling renders the countdown with a monospaced glyph layout so the digits never jitter and the menu bar never re-pings.
The second thing is silence. A menu bar timer that fires a full-screen notification at the end of every focus block is a menu bar timer you turn off after a week. Dockling defaults to a quiet sound and a pet state change. The notification is opt-in.
The third thing is configurability. The Pomodoro 25 5 cadence is a great starting point and a terrible ceiling. Knowledge workers doing real deep work need closer to 50/10 because the ramp-up before flow takes 15 minutes on its own. Dockling defaults to 25/5/15 and lets you change the three durations independently.
Why we put a pet next to the countdown
The argument for ambient visible state is that your peripheral vision is doing more work than you think. When you glance at the clock, you also see the pet, and the pet's state is doing the same job as the digits. A walking octopus means a focus block is running. A sleeping red panda means you're on break. Over a few days, your brain learns to read the pet faster than the timer, which is exactly the kind of effortless recognition that makes a menu bar timer stick.
Apple Shortcuts and the menu bar countdown gap
People who do not want to install an app often try to build a menu bar countdown with Apple Shortcuts and Stream Deck. It can be done. It is also slow to set up, painful to maintain across macOS updates, and missing the part where the timer state is visible at a glance. If you enjoy automation as a hobby, build the shortcut. If you want a working menu bar timer in 60 seconds, that is what Dockling is for.
- The best menu bar timer apps for Mac : Pomodoro, generic countdowns, and the Apple Shortcut hack compared.
- The best Pomodoro timer for Mac in 2026 : full ranked list including Tomato 2, Be Focused, Flow, and Session.
- The best menu bar notes apps for Mac : Tot, Antinote, Drafts, and the Dockling notes bubble side by side.
- The best focus apps for Mac : how a menu bar timer fits into a deeper focus workflow.
Menu bar timer questions, answered.
What is the best menu bar timer app for Mac?
For a glanceable MM:SS countdown that never opens a window, Tomato 2 is the free option and Dockling is the $2.99 paid option that adds focus sessions, exportable history, and a pixel pet. Tot is a clip-style scratchpad with no timer, so it does not count.
Can macOS show a countdown timer in the menu bar?
Not natively. The built-in Clock app on macOS Ventura and later has a Timer feature but it lives in the Clock window, not the menu bar. To get a true live MM:SS countdown next to your clock, you need a third-party app like Dockling, Tomato 2, or a custom Shortcut.
Does the menu bar timer work during full-screen apps and Spaces?
Yes. The menu bar is part of every Space on macOS, so the countdown follows you into Safari fullscreen, into Final Cut, into Xcode, and across desktops. That is the whole reason a menu bar timer is more useful than a window-based timer.
Is there a free menu bar timer for Mac?
Tomato 2 on the Mac App Store is free, open source, and does exactly one thing: a 25 minute countdown in the menu bar. Dockling is $2.99 once and adds configurable cadences, session history, a notes bubble, and a pixel pet next to the clock.
Will a menu bar timer drain my battery?
No. Dockling uses single-digit CPU at idle and the timer tick is once per second. The pet sprite is 32x32 pixels and the entire app sits around 30 MB of memory. It uses less power than a single Slack notification badge.
Can I use it for things other than Pomodoro?
Yes. The three durations (focus, short break, long break) are all configurable. Run 50/10 for deep work, 90/20 for ultradian cycles, or 15/3 for cleaning chores. The menu bar countdown does not care what the time is for.
Is Dockling a one-time purchase?
Yes. $2.99 once, no subscription, no account required. Future updates are included for free.
Background reading on menu bar timers.
If you want to understand why the macOS menu bar is the right home for a countdown, or compare Dockling against the apps that built the category, start here.
- Menu bar (Wikipedia): the macOS menu bar lineage and why it is the only piece of UI guaranteed visible in every Space.
- Pomodoro Technique (Wikipedia): the timeboxing method that the 25/5 default is named after, with citations.
- Tomato 2 on the Mac App Store: the free open-source menu bar Pomodoro timer we benchmark against.
- Tot (official site): the iconic seven-dot menu bar scratchpad, great as a notes counterpart to a separate timer.
- Apple: Use Focus on Mac: the official guide to macOS Focus modes, which pair well with a menu bar timer for deep work blocks.
Put a real countdown in your menu bar in 60 seconds.
Download the .dmg, drag it to Applications, click the menu bar icon. That is the install. $2.99 once, no subscription, no account.