LivingKiosk for Mac
Your spare screen, from the menu bar.
LivingKiosk for Mac shows a display as live wallpaper behind your desktop icons — one per screen, picked from a Library window and configured with a live preview. No account, nothing to sign in to.
Version 3.0.0 · macOS 13 or later · Apple Silicon · about 63 MB · free, MIT-licensed
Source on GitHub · Verify the checksum
What it does
Six things, one menu-bar icon.
Library
Search and browse every display in one window, filterable by category, and pick one per screen.
Setup sheet
Each display’s own /setup page, embedded, with a live preview and a single “Use on this Screen.”
Settings
Per-screen reload schedule, dim, enable, Browsing Mode, and saved configs you can switch back to.
Arrangement
Span one display across several screens as one canvas, or mirror it so every screen shows the same thing.
Custom URL
Any web page becomes a screen — a dashboard, a local dev server, anything with a URL.
Flights companion
A bundled server fetches the live aircraft feed from your own home connection — the only kind the volunteer ADS-B network will answer.
Install
Five steps, once.
Accurate for macOS 15 Sequoia and 26 Tahoe, where right-click-Open no longer bypasses Gatekeeper — this is the path that still works.
- Unzip the download and drag LivingKiosk.app into Applications.
- Open it once. macOS will say it “could not verify” the app is free of malware — click Done (or Cancel). This is expected: the app is signed but not yet notarized with Apple.
- Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to Security. Next to the LivingKiosk message, click Open Anyway, then Open, and confirm with your password or Touch ID.
- It’s a menu-bar app — there’s no window and no Dock icon. Look for the LivingKiosk icon at the top right of the screen, click it, choose Library…, and pick a display.
- If you use Plash, quit it first, so the two aren’t both drawing wallpaper.
Terminal alternative
Skip step 3 and clear the quarantine flag directly, before the first launch:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LivingKiosk.appVerify
Verify the download.
The app is signed but not notarized, so it’s worth checking the zip matches what was actually built and released.
shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/LivingKiosk-mac-arm64.zipCompare the output with the matching line in SHA256SUMS.txt on the release page.
What’s new
3.0.0
- Library — Search and browse every display in one window, filterable by category.
- Setup sheet — Configure a display without leaving the app, live preview included.
- Settings — Per-screen reload schedule, dim, enable, Browsing Mode, and saved configs.
- Arrangement — Span a display across screens, or mirror it to more than one.
- Flights companion — Flights Overhead now runs from your own connection, bundled in.
FAQ
Questions.
Intel Macs?
Not yet — the bundled Flights companion runtime is Apple Silicon only. If you need Intel, build it yourself with the script in the README.
Does it need an account?
No. Nothing to sign in to, nothing to create.
What does it talk to?
livingkiosk.com, for the catalog and, only when you ask, latest.json for updates; whichever displays you choose; and the Flights companion talks to ADS-B feeds from your own connection.
Uninstall
Quit LivingKiosk from its menu, turn it off under System Settings → General → Login Items if you enabled launch at login, and delete it from Applications. It keeps nothing in Application Support; what’s left is small and safe to remove:
~/Library/Preferences/com.joeypayongayong.livingkiosk.plist
~/Library/Caches/com.joeypayongayong.livingkiosk/
~/Library/Caches/LivingKiosk/
~/Library/Logs/LivingKiosk/Why not notarized?
Notarization needs an Apple Developer Program membership, which hasn’t happened yet. Until it does, macOS asks for Open Anyway once. The code is MIT — build it yourself with the script in the README if you’d rather not trust a download.
LivingKiosk for Mac is open source under the MIT licence. Read the code, file an issue, or build it yourself at github.com/hellojoey/livingkiosk-mac.