CoinHUD
A macOS menu-bar app that shows your money like a game HUD, with coins that tick up while you work.
(opens in a new tab)Games make saving feel easy. Real life doesn't.
In games, I'm motivated to earn and careful about spending, because I can watch the coins go up and see the balance sitting there. In real life, money is invisible. We tap, swipe and subscribe without feeling any of it.
CoinHUD started as a personal experiment. The idea came from the menu HUD in Arc Raiders: if I borrowed that game psychology for real money, would I get the same response?
The Solution
Your balance, always in the corner of your eye.
The MacBook menu bar is already a HUD, so that's where the coins live. Earnings come in from Harvest, the time tracker I use for client work, at an hourly rate you set. Balance and savings come from your bank through SimpleFIN, or by manual entry. Everything rolls up into one number.
Coins that tick while you work
CoinHUD polls Harvest every few minutes, so your earnings climb as you log time, with an animated counter on every update.
One number
Earnings, balance and savings combine into a single figure in the menu bar. There's no dashboard to open and no chart to read.
Signed and ready to run
The app is properly signed, so it installs from a direct download without macOS security warnings.
My role
Solo. I took the idea from a game, designed the UI in Figma, built the app in SwiftUI with CloudKit, wired up Harvest and SimpleFIN, and designed the landing page. An iOS version is built and will go public alongside a bigger feature update.
Decisions
The menu bar as the HUD
I was working entirely on a MacBook, and the menu bar is the one place that's always on screen. The trade-off: there's room for about one number, so everything has to collapse into it.
Earnings from logged hours
Coins come from time tracked in Harvest, so the number moves while I work, where a salary moves once a month. That constant feedback is what makes games motivating. The trade-off: live earnings only work for people who track their time.
Direct download first
A signed build I ship myself let me use CoinHUD every day while the feature set grows, with the App Store saved for the iOS launch. The trade-off: no App Store discovery for now.
Let's build something.
Launching a product, need a new site, or hiring? Tell me what you're working on.