A free tool from Daily CMO
Deck sits in your Mac's menu bar and shows what you're in right now, how long is left, and when you're next actually free. Look up, not away.
Every calendar you connect, merged into one timeline.
The menu bar reads ● 23m while you're in something and counts down to the next thing when you're not. Set it as wide or as narrow as your menu bar can spare.
Deck finds your longest uninterrupted gap and names it: free now for 2h30m, until 4:30pm. Your calendar tells you when you're interrupted. This tells you when you're not.
Work, personal, the studio one nobody uses. They merge into a single timeline so a 7pm dinner competes with a 7pm call on equal footing.
Zoom, Meet, Teams and Webex links are pulled out of the invite. Click the event, you're in. Or copy the link, or copy the whole day as text for Slack.
Worth being specific about, since you're installing something from the internet.
Deck never signs in to your Google account. It reads one private, read-only link per calendar — the “secret address in iCal format” that Google generates for you — and that link can only ever be used to read that one calendar. You can invalidate it from Google Calendar at any time.
Nothing is uploaded anywhere. There's no server, no analytics, no account, and no telemetry. The only network request Deck ever makes is to Google, for your own calendar. Everything else stays on your Mac.
~/Deck, ~/.deck, an icon in Applications, one login item. Nothing else.Two things will look alarming. Both are normal, and here's why.
Download and unzip, then double-click Install Deck.command.
A Terminal window opens and narrates what it's doing. That's the installer, not a hack.
If nothing happens, right-click the installer and choose Open.
Deck isn't signed with a $99/year Apple certificate, so macOS blocks it on first run. On newer macOS it fails silently instead of warning you — then it's System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
If your Mac asks to install developer tools, let it, then run the installer again.
Deck runs on Python. Most Macs have it, some don't, and Apple's own installer is the fix. It's a big download — go and make coffee.
Deck appears in your menu bar and walks you through connecting a calendar.
Google Calendar → pick a calendar → Integrate calendar → copy the secret iCal address → paste. Repeat for each calendar you want.
Your menu bar is full. macOS silently drops items that don't fit, and a MacBook notch eats a chunk of the space. Quit another menu bar app, or set Deck to Settings → Menu bar text → Just a dot.
It's free because it took an afternoon and it solves something that annoyed me daily.
Built by Daily CMO, where I write about marketing that actually moves numbers. If Deck is useful, the newsletter probably is too.