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Nightwatch icon

Nightwatch for Mac

Menu bar companion for telescope imaging: tells you when tonight is clear and what to point at.

By rsutcliffe. Free and open source, MIT licence.

Get it with OpenDMG View source on GitHub

Nightwatch at a glance

Version
1.6.4
Released
8 October 2026
Download size
22 MB
Works on
Apple silicon and Intel
Licence
MIT
Category
Menu Bar and Notch
Developer
rsutcliffe
GitHub stars
88

About Nightwatch

Free macOS menu-bar app for astrophotography: finds tonight's clear window, ranks your targets, tells you when it's worth setting up.

Screenshots

Nightwatch screenshot 1Nightwatch screenshot 2Nightwatch screenshot 3Nightwatch screenshot 4

How to install Nightwatch on a Mac

  1. Get OpenDMG. It is a free app store for open source Mac apps. Download OpenDMG.
  2. Search for Nightwatch and press Get. OpenDMG downloads version 1.6.4 from rsutcliffe's own GitHub release.
  3. Open it. The download is checked against its SHA-256 fingerprint and its signature is checked on your Mac before it lands in Applications.

Updates to Nightwatch show up in OpenDMG and install with one button. No account is needed.

Prefer to do it by hand? The developer's file is on GitHub: Nightwatch.dmg (22 MB).

What is new in Nightwatch 1.6.4

## What's new in 1.6.4 "Hex, patch 4"

- On a night when the Moon stays below the horizon, the popover's Moon tile reads "Down" with "tonight" under it, where "Down tonight" on one line was broken in the middle of the word

## Install

Download `Nightwatch-1.6.4.dmg` below, open it and drag Nightwatch to Applications. It is signed with a Developer ID and notarised by Apple. The first time you open it, macOS asks whether to open an app downloaded from the internet: choose Open. Its SHA-256 checksum is in `Nightwatch-1.6.4.dmg.sha256`.

If the desktop widget shows only grey bars after you replace an older copy, macOS is still holding the old version on record: the [Desktop widget section of the README](https://github.com/rsutcliffe/nightwatch#desktop-widget-optional) has the two Terminal commands that clear it.

From 0.6.7 on, Nightwatch checks once a day for a newer version and says so in its popover. Questions and ideas: [Discussions](https://github.com/rsutcliffe/nightwatch/discussions). Problems: [Issues](https://github.com/rsutcliffe/nightwatch/issues).

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