SENotifier, a Stack Exchange inbox notifier for Mac OS X

Question

Screenshot

Updates

Version 1.1

• Added support for Notification Center (10.8 and later)
• Adjusted menu icon to align better with existing menu items
• Auto-update is now supported via Sparkle

Version 1.0

• Option to automatically start at login
• Login token now requested with no_expiry (you may need to re-allow after upgrading)
• New application icon

Version 0.5

• Now compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and later
• Different hide times are now available
• Status icon is black when there are no messages (thanks Kevin Sołtysiak)
• Better error handling and reporting on inbox checking failure

Version 0.4

• Growl support built-in (optional, notifications off by default)
• Site icon is now displayed in notification menu items

About

SENotifier is a Mac OS X app that shows the current contents of your Stack Exchange inbox in the menu bar and was inspired by Gmail Notifier.

I created this app so the inbox notifier would be visible all the time, instead of only when a Stack Exchange page was loaded in the browser.

This app uses the new Stack Exchange API v2.0 with authentication, so it can get the current contents of your inbox.

License

BSD license.

Download

Download (750 KB .dmg)

Or install with Homebrew:

brew cask install stack-exchange-notifier

Platform

SENotifier requires Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or later.

Contact

Greg Hewgill

Code

This app is developed in Objective-C using Xcode 4.2. No (Stack Exchange) libraries were harmed in the creation of this software (that means the authentication flow is all straight Objective-C code). SBJson is used for the JSON parsing bits.

The code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/ghewgill/senotifier.

Self-promotion

Answer 1

Very good. I've been looking for something simple like this for a while. Thanks. As potential future features;

• Growl integration would be great
• An option to temporarily disable notifications (i.e. when you want to get some work done and don't want to get distracted by revisiting your answers etc!)
• A 'run on startup' option
• Maybe have the default menubar icon as black and when you receive a notification change it to the current blue icon along with the count. Similar to how Sparrow works:

• Notification Center Support!

  

  

  so something like:

  

Answer 2

I like the current logos of SENotifier, but, I was bored, and decided to have a go at making some SENotifier logos as well. And, well, here they are! Tell me if you like them, or any comments! I don't know if the pictures will keep their formatting, though. Oh well.

1).

(.png)

2.)

(.icns)

Answer 3

Any way of porting this to iOS?

Answer 4

I added support for OSX Notification Center and made a pull request.

Answer 5

I really like this too. It is great! I second @pastylegs' comment. Growl notifications would be very nice.
I also wanted to add another comment. If you look at the SE inbox on the actual website, you'll notice that it displays past, read notifications:

It would be nice to have several (maybe 5 or so) read notification in the menu bar. I find myself going back to the inbox several times to go to older notifications.

All in all, it's a great little tool and I encourage you to keep up the work!

Answer 6

Er… I’m sorry, but I don’t speak robot. I know enough about computers to get by, more than most civilians, but I was wondering if you could dumb the answer to my problem a lot for me please?

The SENotifier for OX was working perfectly until today, when I took my computer away from my house, and wifi. I’m not sure if disconnecting from the internet had anything to do with it, but the problem started right then.

When I got home I tried to login to the app again and it wouldn’t let me. When I tried this flashed on the screen for one second:

then nothing. It didn’t sign in. When I toggled over the icon, this is what I saw:

When I clicked on “login” the same “Authorizing Application” window would pop up every time, then it still wouldn’t log me in. I tried everything I could think of.

1. I tried ”Check Now” a lot of times
2. I clicked ”Check for updates” several times (to no avail; it would just tell me I had the latest version installed.
3. I ”Quit” then ”Ejected" SENotifier, then restarted the whole process again. Nothing.
4. I ”Deleted" SENotifier from my Mac, ”ReInstalled" it, then tried everything again. Nothing.
5. I tried the beta version, which supposedly didn’t have “the bug” that they said was causing the problem. That didn’t help either.
   

So…give it to me straight. Am I SOL, or can you help me? If you have any idea what if wrong, please talk to me like you would a child because even though I am really good with computers, this part is difficult.

Answer 7

Bug report here. It's not working on CoreDuo MBP/10.6.8

I suppose because it's 64-bit only but you didn't mention system requirements anywhere here.

Answer 8

I've been recently running into a problem with SENotifier where it updates when a message is directed at me, but it always shows an old message rather than the lastest message.

Answer 9

I have forked your source code, and enabled Retina display support. I have also recreated all the icons.
Check it out on GitHub.

Answer 10

This is an awesome app, great job.

But I think you forgot to make the extra text after "Check Now" change white when you hover over it, see:

I'm not a Mac App Developer (not yet, anyway) so I don't know if it is possible to change that but I just wanted to let you know about that.

Answer 11

Version 1.3 Update

I have updated all the icons to make it look much better.
You can check out the source code and download the DMG here: https://github.com/josephyoon/senotifier

Answer 12

feature-request

I'd like to request that the app detects when night mode is enabled under general system preferences and switches the icon to a white color.

This is what the icon currently looks like:

... too dark. :(

I also created issue #26, on GitHub, for this.

Answer 13

I've been using this and its nice. It would be great if this app could implement the new notification API in OSX mountain lion.

Answer 14

This is really nice, but it would be great if the "Log In" menu item would change text (maybe to Log Out [User Name]—presumably analogous to the current "Invalidate login token") when the app is logged in. Not currently having any unread notifications I could only assume it had logged in successfully by seeing the screenshots you'd posted here.

It would be doubly nice for that item to show your current rep (your highest single SE site rep), but perhaps I'm just really finicky about checking that all the time.

Answer 15

What does NSURLErrorDomain error -999 mean?

I tried logging in manually, but it said it doesn't exist, even though it works when I log in through my browser.

Update: I don't know if this will help. (Originally I was going to upload images, but I only have 1 rep, so I'll just describe it in detail).

1. I open up the app and I get a screen similar to the SE log in web page and click on "log in with Stack Exchange"
2. Then the window "The operation couldn't be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error -999.) pops up. It gives me one option, which is to click "OK".
3. Next the Stack Exchange Notifier window says "Third Party Cookies Appear To Be Disabled", "You can continue and log in manually however." I log in manually.
4. Stack Exchange OpenID window shows up and I log in. Then it says "Not Found", "This page could not be found."

But I'm able to log in through my browser, so I don't know why it says that.

Answer 16

It would be nice to have an option, to open the Website stackoverflow without having a notification.. I assume when you have a new notification you click on it and will be directed to the website. But when i dont have a notification, the app is useless.

Also i agree with Kit Grose, that it is weird to see "Log in" as i am already logged in.

Also it would be nice to give a better (self explanatory) name to the "invalidate login token". As i just installed the app, when i click on it, it seems that it does not do anything. One must directly google it to find out what it actually does. At least it would be nice to have a feedback from this action, like you see when you click "check for updates".

Answer 17

Getting a strange issue here, "OAuth request must be over HTTPS":

Any thoughts on what's causing it? I've deleted and reinstalled, no luck. (And tried the invalidate token option).

Answer 18

Since updating to OS 10.9 I get crashes, apparently whenever a notification arrives:

Process:         Stack Exchange Notifier [50227]
Path:            /Applications/Stack Exchange Notifier.app/Contents/MacOS/Stack Exchange Notifier
Identifier:      hewgill.com.Stack-Exchange-Notifier
Version:         1.1 (8)
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [179]
Responsible:     Stack Exchange Notifier [50227]

...

Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:  EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '*** -bytes only defined for abstract class.  Define -[_NSPlaceholderData bytes]!'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called
...
Application Specific Backtrace 1:
0   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8f59e41c __exceptionPreprocess + 172
1   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x00007fff8bbb5e75 objc_exception_throw + 43
2   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8f59e2cc +[NSException raise:format:] + 204
3   Foundation                          0x00007fff8fbaf1d1 NSRequestConcreteImplementation + 231
4   Foundation                          0x00007fff8fb43927 -[NSData(NSData) bytes] + 39
5   Growl                               0x000000010004819b +[GrowlGNTPBinaryChunk identifierForBinaryData:] + 52
6   Growl                               0x000000010004b897 +[GrowlNotificationGNTPPacket getHeaders:binaryChunks:notificationID:forNotificationDict:] + 1083
7   Growl                               0x0000000100046968 +[GrowlGNTPOutgoingPacket outgoingPacketOfType:forDict:] + 261
8   Growl                               0x0000000100038f78 -[GrowlGNTPCommunicationAttempt socket:didConnectToHost:port:] + 36
9   Growl                               0x000000010003ec6c __34-[GrowlGCDAsyncSocket didConnect:]_block_invoke_0 + 79
10  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff84fe11d7 _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 12
11  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff84fde2ad _dispatch_client_callout + 8
12  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff84fe5f03 _dispatch_main_queue_callback_4CF + 333
13  CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8f505839 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_SERVICING_THE_MAIN_DISPATCH_QUEUE__ + 9
14  CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8f4c0b14 __CFRunLoopRun + 1636
15  CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8f4c0275 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 309
16  HIToolbox                           0x00007fff8fe1df0d RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 226
17  HIToolbox                           0x00007fff8fe1dcb7 ReceiveNextEventCommon + 479
18  HIToolbox                           0x00007fff8fe1dabc _BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInModeWithFilter + 65
19  AppKit                              0x00007fff854c928e _DPSNextEvent + 1434
20  AppKit                              0x00007fff854c88db -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 122
21  AppKit                              0x00007fff854bc9cc -[NSApplication run] + 553
22  AppKit                              0x00007fff854a7803 NSApplicationMain + 940
23  Stack Exchange Notifier             0x00000001000018c8 start + 52
24  ???                                 0x0000000000000001 0x0 + 1

...

Answer 19

Right now your current for login is a Log in and a Invalidate login token (i.e. log out). There is no way for the user to tell if he/she is logged in or not right now. I find that really annoying, and wonder when not getting any messages if I am actually logged in.

What if you just had a Logout single NSMenuItem when the user is logged in (which is set to NSState NSOnState), and with a Login item when the user is logged out (which is set to NSState NSOffState). This effectively makes a toggle, and seems like better design. :)

Answer 20

I hate to be "that guy", but SE notifier is not gatekeeper-compliant. Any chance of getting it code-signed?

Answer 21

I can't get the different hide times to work. No matter what time I select, it only hides for 25 minutes. I'm on Snow Leopard.

Answer 22

Thanks for the app, I've used it for about two years now, and it does what it is supposed to.

There is just one minor bug, when I boot up my computer (OS X 10.6.8) and SENotifier automatically launches, I initially get the "This computer's internet connection appears to be offline" alert. If I just click "log in" in the popup menu it works normally. Maybe there is a timing issue, my Wi-Fi connecting hardware is perhaps slower than that of the machine you tested this on (since my computer is quite old). Anyway, it's a minor bug, I can live with it.

Answer 23

Mirror for version 1.1

---

I couldn't download the .dmg file, the browser tells me that the server is unreachable, so I download the source code from github and made a "mirror", If you have the same issue you can alternatively download it at:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jryzj1omtf5dq7t/Stack%20Exchange%20Notifier.dmg

Answer 24

I'm completely unable to log in on a i5 MBP running 10.10.3 - the login window disappears before I can do anything.

I'm logged in to my SE account on every browser on my machine and assumed it was fetching my credentials that way, but no dice.

I've reinstalled the app twice, fwiw.

Answer 25

Lately I've been getting intermittent "Access denied" warning messages next to the "Check now" line. If I click on "Log in" the login window pops up, automatically logs itself in, and disappears, and everything updates. It seems like it happens about once a day -- is there some kind of 24-hour credential timeout?

It would be nice if the menu icon changed color to indicate that it had gotten an error, instead of me having to click on it to see the message.

Answer 26

SE Notifier is crashing on me now. It was working fine this morning, but when I came back from lunch the menu icon was missing. I tried restarting it, the login window popped up, it filled itself in as usual and disappeared, and then the app crashed. Here's the beginning of the crash report file (it's too long to post everything):

Process:               Stack Exchange Notifier [11170]
Path:                  /Applications/Stack Exchange Notifier.app/Contents/MacOS/Stack Exchange Notifier
Identifier:            hewgill.com.Stack-Exchange-Notifier
Version:               1.1 (8)
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Stack Exchange Notifier [11170]
User ID:               505

Date/Time:             2018-05-03 13:42:43.119 -0400
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.11.6 (15G20015)
Report Version:        11
Anonymous UUID:        2F846CD1-9441-91E4-768A-967C7910A47E

Sleep/Wake UUID:       C8B67568-6E80-4443-BD61-A600DCE79C13

Time Awake Since Boot: 2300000 seconds
Time Since Wake:       800000 seconds

System Integrity Protection: disabled

Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '*** -[NSURL initWithString:relativeToURL:]: nil string parameter'
abort() called
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException

Application Specific Backtrace 1:
0   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8a3c0452 __exceptionPreprocess + 178
1   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x00007fff9136373c objc_exception_throw + 48
2   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8a42749d +[NSException raise:format:] + 205
3   Foundation                          0x00007fff96a34f99 -[NSURL(NSURL) initWithString:relativeToURL:] + 102
4   Stack Exchange Notifier             0x0000000100002762 -[Stack_Exchange_NotifierAppDelegate resetMenu] + 1239
5   Stack Exchange Notifier             0x0000000100004d8b -[Stack_Exchange_NotifierAppDelegate connectionDidFinishLoading:] + 3132
6   CFNetwork                           0x00000001030cd391 __65-[NSURLConnectionInternal _withConnectionAndDelegate:onlyActive:]_block_invoke + 69
7   CFNetwork                           0x00000001030cd2a6 -[NSURLConnectionInternal _withConnectionAndDelegate:onlyActive:] + 233
8   CFNetwork                           0x00000001030cd1ab -[NSURLConnectionInternal _withActiveConnectionAndDelegate:] + 48
9   CFNetwork                           0x00000001030d1f4a ___ZN27URLConnectionClient_Classic26_delegate_didFinishLoadingEU13block_pointerFvvE_block_invoke + 104
10  CFNetwork                           0x000000010326707d ___ZN27URLConnectionClient_Classic18_withDelegateAsyncEPKcU13block_pointerFvP16_CFURLConnectionPK33CFURLConnectionClientCurrent_VMaxE_block_invoke_2 + 100
11  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff90b4240b _dispatch_client_callout + 8
12  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff90b50039 _dispatch_block_invoke + 474
13  CFNetwork                           0x00000001030cd068 _ZN19RunloopBlockContext13_invoke_blockEPKvPv + 24
14  CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8a2f7d24 CFArrayApplyFunction + 68
15  CFNetwork                           0x00000001030ccf61 _ZN19RunloopBlockContext7performEv + 137
16  CFNetwork                           0x00000001030cce02 _ZN17MultiplexerSource7performEv + 282
17  CFNetwork                           0x00000001030ccc24 _ZN17MultiplexerSource8_performEPv + 72
18  CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8a3557e1 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_SOURCE0_PERFORM_FUNCTION__ + 17
19  CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8a334f0c __CFRunLoopDoSources0 + 556
20  CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8a33442f __CFRunLoopRun + 927
21  CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff8a333e28 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 296
22  HIToolbox                           0x00007fff8a99f935 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 235
23  HIToolbox                           0x00007fff8a99f76f ReceiveNextEventCommon + 432
24  HIToolbox                           0x00007fff8a99f5af _BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInModeWithFilter + 71
25  AppKit                              0x00007fff8b8a0df6 _DPSNextEvent + 1067
26  AppKit                              0x00007fff8b8a0226 -[NSApplication _nextEventMatchingEventMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 454
27  AppKit                              0x00007fff8b894d80 -[NSApplication run] + 682
28  AppKit                              0x00007fff8b85e368 NSApplicationMain + 1176
29  Stack Exchange Notifier             0x00000001000018c8 start + 52

Global Trace Buffer (reverse chronological seconds):
18446744020.891216 CFNetwork                    0x00000001030e2c9f TCP Conn 0x1053b06a0 SSL Handshake DONE
18446744020.937138 CFNetwork                    0x00000001030e2b7b TCP Conn 0x1053b06a0 starting SSL negotiation
18446744020.937313 CFNetwork                    0x00000001030e1545 TCP Conn 0x1053b06a0 complete. fd: 30, err: 0
18446744020.937466 CFNetwork                    0x000000010316fe1f TCP Conn 0x1053b06a0 event 1. err: 0
18446744020.954365 CFNetwork                    0x00000001030e0817 TCP Conn 0x1053b06a0 started
18446744020.968639 AppleJPEG                    0x00007fff9896e11c [0x1068a5e00] Decoding completed without errors
18446744020.969593 AppleJPEG                    0x00007fff9896c0fc [0x1068a5e00] Options: 2x-1 [FFFFFFFF,FFFFFFFF] 0001D060
18446744020.969593 AppleJPEG                    0x00007fff9896bfae [0x1068a5e00] Decoding: C0 0x00300030 0x0000304A 0x22111100 0x00000000 1705
18446744020.969593 AppleJPEG                    0x00007fff9896b05e [0x1068a5e00] Created session
18446744020.969593 AppleJPEG                    0x00007fff9896ba11 [0x1068a5e00] Releasing session
18446744020.971146 AppleJPEG                    0x00007fff9896b05e [0x1068a5e00] Created session
18446744020.987900 CFNetwork                    0x00000001030e2c9f TCP Conn 0x1052b8180 SSL Handshake DONE
18446744020.992699 CFNetwork                    0x00000001030e2c9f TCP Conn 0x1037b9450 SSL Handshake DONE
18446744021.044495 CFNetwork                    0x00000001030e2b7b TCP Conn 0x1052b8180 starting SSL negotiation

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   libsystem_kernel.dylib          0x00007fff96953f06 __pthread_kill + 10
1   libsystem_pthread.dylib         0x00007fff945234ec pthread_kill + 90
2   libsystem_c.dylib               0x00007fff864246df abort + 129
3   libc++abi.dylib                 0x00007fff944c3b31 abort_message + 257
4   libc++abi.dylib                 0x00007fff944e9e07 default_terminate_handler() + 267
5   libobjc.A.dylib                 0x00007fff91367491 _objc_terminate() + 103
6   libc++abi.dylib                 0x00007fff944e6ffe std::__terminate(void (*)()) + 8
7   libc++abi.dylib                 0x00007fff944e7073 std::terminate() + 51
8   libdispatch.dylib               0x00007fff90b4241f _dispatch_client_callout + 28
9   libdispatch.dylib               0x00007fff90b50039 _dispatch_block_invoke + 474
10  com.apple.CFNetwork             0x00000001030cd068 RunloopBlockContext::_invoke_block(void const*, void*) + 24
11  com.apple.CoreFoundation        0x00007fff8a2f7d24 CFArrayApplyFunction + 68
12  com.apple.CFNetwork             0x00000001030ccf61 RunloopBlockContext::perform() + 137
13  com.apple.CFNetwork             0x00000001030cce02 MultiplexerSource::perform() + 282
14  com.apple.CFNetwork             0x00000001030ccc24 MultiplexerSource::_perform(void*) + 72
15  com.apple.CoreFoundation        0x00007fff8a3557e1 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_SOURCE0_PERFORM_FUNCTION__ + 17
16  com.apple.CoreFoundation        0x00007fff8a334f0c __CFRunLoopDoSources0 + 556
17  com.apple.CoreFoundation        0x00007fff8a33442f __CFRunLoopRun + 927
18  com.apple.CoreFoundation        0x00007fff8a333e28 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 296
19  com.apple.HIToolbox             0x00007fff8a99f935 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 235
20  com.apple.HIToolbox             0x00007fff8a99f76f ReceiveNextEventCommon + 432
21  com.apple.HIToolbox             0x00007fff8a99f5af _BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInModeWithFilter + 71
22  com.apple.AppKit                0x00007fff8b8a0df6 _DPSNextEvent + 1067
23  com.apple.AppKit                0x00007fff8b8a0226 -[NSApplication _nextEventMatchingEventMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 454
24  com.apple.AppKit                0x00007fff8b894d80 -[NSApplication run] + 682
25  com.apple.AppKit                0x00007fff8b85e368 NSApplicationMain + 1176
26  hewgill.com.Stack-Exchange-Notifier 0x00000001000018c8 start + 52

UPDATE 2018-10-18:

One of my notifications this morning was a "chat reply" that wa addressed to me:

https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/47231762#47231762

This chat message occurred 20 minutes before the first crash. The problem apparently cleared up after I processed pending notifications. So maybe there's a bug regarding chat reply notifications. SENotifier already filters out notifications about edits; if it can't display chat notifications, it should filter them out as well.