Petit Sky
Glance up from the desk, and the sky filling your view moves you a little. Any hour, any weather, just as you like. Watch the day’s sky drift by between tasks.
Not on the App Store in your country? Download Petit Sky for the EU.
A Mac menu bar app. Free, with no ads.
macOS 26 or later, with Show menu bar background off (the default). Apple silicon and Intel.
Petit Sky runs on a Mac. Share the link with AirDrop, Messages or Mail, and open it there.
The sky could not be loaded. The pictures further down show what it looks like.
Every sample clip is drawn with exactly the same code as the app. The menu bar text is a stand-in. Clouds drift, rain and snow fall, thunder flashes. At night the stars twinkle, and now and then a meteor crosses the sky. On your Mac, it can also stay in sync with the real weather and time.
A sky along the top of your screen
With Current time on, the sun and the moon appear where you would actually see them in your time zone, and the night fills with 2,068 real stars from the Yale Bright Star Catalogue, in their real places. The moon keeps its phase and shows the same face it shows from the ground. Clouds drift across with the soft irregularity of real weather, and a meteor crosses the night sky now and then. The sky can also stay in sync with the real weather.
With Current time off, drag the slider, or pick morning, noon, evening or night, to see the sky of any time of day you like. You can also choose from six weathers.
The menu bar itself does not change. So that the text never gets hard to read, morning or night, the sky is tuned to stay out of the menu’s way as much as it can. That is why the stars, clouds, rain and snow show best in the edges above and below the text.
Click the icon to turn Petit Sky on or off. Right-click it to open the menu.
One menu
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Current time
On, the sky matches the time on your clock. Off, the sky runs on from the time you choose.
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Time and time of day
Choose with a slider through the whole day, or with four buttons: morning, noon, evening and night.
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Running
Pause it and the sun and the moon stay where they are. The clouds, rain, snow, thunder and the twinkling of the stars carry on.
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Weather
Choose from clear, fair, cloudy, rain, snow and thunder. It can also stay in sync with the weather where you are.
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Sun and Moon
Show or hide the two of them. The colour of the sky stays.
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Sound
A breeze, rain or a thunderstorm to match the weather, with thunder a few seconds after each flash. Off by default, with its own volume in the menu.
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Open at login
Off by default. Turn it on, and Petit Sky opens as soon as you log in.
Sync with the current weather
Turn on Current weather and the sky shows the weather where you are. Current time turns on with it, so what you see is the sky outside right now. While the sky is on screen, the weather is updated from Apple Weather once an hour.
It is off until you turn it on. When it is on, the app uses your rough location, rounded to about ten kilometres, and sends it to Apple's weather service and nowhere else. Turn it off, or pick a weather or a time yourself, and the app stops asking.
While Current weather is off, Petit Sky draws the sky with no location and no network. The sun, the moon and the stars are computed on your Mac from the clock and the time zone.
What is recorded
Petit Sky does not collect personal information of any kind, including activity data. It uses your location only while Current weather is on. There are no third-party SDKs, events, analytics or identifiers, and your settings are stored only on your Mac and never sent anywhere.
The app talks to Apple for two things only: the tips in About Petit Sky, to check their price and when you buy one, and the real weather while Current weather is on. Neither goes to a server run by nowthy. The direct-download edition for the EU also reads the current version number from nowthy.com when it starts and once a day.
Free
Every feature is free. About Petit Sky has two tips: a cup of coffee, or a bag of it. Buying one changes nothing in the app.
Notes
A blog about making Petit Sky.
- Petit Sky · ReferencePetit Sky menu rows, and what each one doesOctober 1, 2026
- Petit Sky · Maker's noteDrawing a small sky in a Mac menu barSeptember 22, 2026