For Mac · Free and open source

BeepBar

Your course materials on your Mac.
Your edits stay intact.

BeepBar downloads course files from WeBeep and Moodle into a folder you choose. If a file you have edited, like a PDF with your notes, changes online, your copy is never overwritten. For Polimi courses you can also watch lecture recordings right inside the app.

Native for Mac
Stays in the menu bar
~0% CPU at idle

Download for Apple Silicon Code on GitHub

macOS 14 or later · Apple Silicon

Thu 24 Sep 10:41

The BeepBar window, shown with its Italian interface: twelve courses, five turned on, each with its own folder. At the top, the status “All up to date” with 12 new and 4 updated files.

Synced

12 new · 4 updated

Sync now

Open BeepBar…

Quit BeepBar

Efficiency

Light. For real.

BeepBar is designed to stay open all day without being noticed: when it is not syncing it uses almost nothing and never asks you to keep anything in front.

~0%

CPU at idle

Between syncs BeepBar stays still. Measured on the installed build: between 0.0% and 0.3% CPU.

Swift

Native for macOS

A Swift app for macOS and Apple Silicon, without bundled Electron or Chromium.

Windows to keep open

It lives in the menu bar. Status, “Sync now” and conflicts are one click away.

Auto

You decide when to sync

By hand with “Sync now”, or automatically from every 30 minutes to 3 times a day. macOS picks the exact moment, taking battery and system load into account.

Even while syncing it stays measured: controlled parallel downloads, low memory use even with large files, visible progress and cancel at any time, without leaving half-written files. When you open the window, your courses appear straight away while the list refreshes in the background.

Your edits

An update never erases your work.

On every sync BeepBar compares three versions of each file: the one downloaded last time, the one on your Mac and the one online. Then it acts accordingly.

New file online

It is downloaded into the course folder.

Only the online version changed

Your unmodified copy is updated.

You edited the file on your Mac

Your version stays where it is. Nothing is overwritten.

Both changed

Your copy stays intact. The online version is set aside and BeepBar shows you a conflict.

The teacher moves or removes a file

An unedited copy follows the move. For edited or removed files you choose in Conflicts; nothing is deleted automatically.

In a conflict, you decide

Open “Conflicts” from the menu bar or the window. For each file, choose which version to keep. BeepBar does not merge the two versions and never chooses for you.

How to use it

Set it up once. Then forget about it.

1
Sign in
Open BeepBar from the menu bar and sign in to WeBeep or Moodle in your browser.
2
Choose the folder
Pick where to keep your materials. Each course gets its own subfolder, which you can rename.
3
Select your courses
Turn on only the ones you care about.
4
Sync
Press “Sync now”. From the menu under the button, choose whether and how often to check automatically.
5
Choose your settings
In Settings you can turn off notifications and launch at login, both enabled by default. Clicking a notification opens the relevant page. Enable Data Saver to pause automatic downloads on your phone’s hotspot or with Low Data Mode; “Sync now” always downloads. Telemetry, on by default, only counts how many installations use BeepBar: at most one report a day with the app and macOS versions, and no account, course or file information. A notice explains it before the first report, and you can turn it off any time in Settings → Telemetry.
6
Watch recordings
For selected Polimi courses, open “Recordings” and sign in with Polimi. Lectures play right inside BeepBar, with speeds from 0.5x to 2x, 10 and 30 second skips, zoom and keyboard shortcuts, and pick up where you stopped. If a recording can’t play in the app, it opens in your browser. The feature is enabled by default and can be turned off in Settings.
7
Keep up
Every lecture shows how much you have watched: tick “Done” for the ones you followed elsewhere, one by one or for a whole course. Save lectures from different courses in a single Watchlist. After every sync BeepBar checks your selected courses and tells you once when there are new recordings, without ever downloading video.

The BeepBar Activity tab, shown with its Italian interface: 12 new, 4 updated, 1 of your edits kept, with the list of files that arrived in each course. — After each sync, “Activity” shows what arrived, course by course. A click opens documents; the context menu reveals them in Finder. Scripts, apps and unknown types are only revealed in Finder.

Supported universities

Where it works today.

WeBeep

Politecnico di Milano

Your course files and folders, synced straight to your Mac. Watch lecture recordings in the app, with your progress and a Watchlist.

Moodle

University of Padua

Pick your Moodle area when you first sign in:

Macroarea STEM
Medicina e Chirurgia
Psicologia
Giurisprudenza
Economia e Scienze Politiche
Scienze Umane
Agraria e Medicina Veterinaria

Installation

One extra approval on first launch. Then it is ready.

You don’t have to do it alone: copy the ready-made prompt for your AI assistant into ChatGPT, Claude or similar and let it guide you step by step.

BeepBar is open source but not notarized by Apple, so on first launch macOS asks for an extra confirmation. It is an approval step, not a sign that the app is dangerous.

01
Download the official release
The DMG for Apple Silicon, from the BeepBar GitHub Releases page.
02
Move BeepBar to Applications
Open the DMG and drag BeepBar into the Applications folder.
03
Open it once
The release is not notarized by Apple, so macOS may block the first launch.
04
Approve the first launch
System Settings → Privacy & Security → Security section: choose “Open Anyway” for BeepBar and confirm.
Do not turn off Gatekeeper and do not download BeepBar from other sources.

Prefer to be guided?

Copy this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or another assistant and go one step at a time.

Help me install BeepBar on macOS step by step.

I downloaded it from the official GitHub Releases page:
https://github.com/tommaso-vaccari/Beepbar/releases

BeepBar is open source and the developer assures me that it is safe to install. If I ask, you can check the public GitHub repository and release page and explain what you find in simple words. Do not invent checks or details you cannot confirm.

If I ask why macOS needs an extra confirmation, explain briefly that this download is not notarized by Apple. That is a macOS approval step, not a statement that BeepBar is dangerous.

Guide me through these steps, stopping after each one so I can confirm:
1. Open the DMG and drag BeepBar into the Applications folder.
2. Wait for the copy to finish, then eject the mounted DMG from Finder.
3. Open BeepBar once from Applications.
4. If macOS blocks the first launch, open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to Security, find BeepBar, click Open Anyway, then confirm Open.
5. Explain each message in simple words and help me confirm that I used the official release.

Do not describe the app or this procedure as unsafe just because macOS asks for approval. Do not suggest disabling Gatekeeper or downloading from another source.

The screens you may see