Electricity Maps on your macOS status bar

Install xbar manually

Download and install version 2.1.7-beta (newer releases can be found here). If you’re using Homebrew, then you can also simply run:

brew install --cask xbar

Install the Electricity Maps plugin

The Electricity Maps plugin is available here as a Github Gist. It needs to be downloaded into xbar’s plugin folder, and made executable, which can be performed by entering the following commands into a terminal.

curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/corradio/23676994355836817b81d39dce0c9df2/raw/001-electricitymaps.5m.py -o ~/Library/Application\ Support/xbar/plugins/001-electricitymaps.5m.py
chmod +x ~/Library/Application\ Support/xbar/plugins/001-electricitymaps.5m.py

It’s probably also a good idea to ensure your default python installation has the right dependencies installed:

/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/python3 -m pip install requests

Once you have done this, you should refresh plugins by selecting xbar > Refresh all, or pressing the refresh icon. You can configure the plugin by opening it.

The API key can be obtained on the Electricity Maps free-tier page. The zone key is optional, and it will default to the location of your device, as determined by your IP address. You can pick between two styles: either show the carbon intensity (in gCO2e/kWh), or the Carbon-Free Energy (CFE) percentage, being the percentage of low-carbon electricity available.