Put Product Hunt right in your Mac’s menu bar

Product Hunt for iOS Mac teaser 001

Product Hunt, the popular Y Combinator-backed service that lets users share and discover new products, earlier this month unveiled a thoroughly revamped iPhone and iPad application that puts fun back into product discovery.

It’s a gorgeously done app that I use every day and it’s made me want that experience on my Mac. Lo and behold, Product Hunt for Mac. A tiny, official client for OS X, this app puts Product Hunt’s familiar round “P” icon right into your Mac’s menu bar, where it sits and dutifully awaits a click of the mouse to present you with the latest popular products, games, books and podcasts on Product Hunt.

“The Mac app is one of those most popular Topics on Product Hunt and over the past year, we’ve seen a lot of interest specifically in menu bar apps,” said Product Hunt founder and CEO Ryan Hoover.

It was written 100 percent in Swift, Apple’s new programming language for iOS and OS X development. “It took about two weeks to build the core functionality, followed by about another week of polishing, bug-fixing, and some smaller feature additions, like the ‘firehose control’ in the settings,” he said.

Product Hunt for OS X settings Mac screenshot 001

The app features a subtle notification counter increments when new things are trending on Product Hunt, surfacing posts at the top of the feed with a red dot. My only quibble with the app is that it’s a bit difficult to read the number of upvotes in clear grey and that I’m unable at least to vote right from my Mac’s menu bar.

Developers are aware of these complaints and are working on an update. “We’d like to add more interactivity to it, too, such as the ability to add to collections,” Hoover hinted.

Pricing and availability

Product Hunt for Mac is a free download direct from the Product Hunt website.

The official Product Hunt iOS application, which requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS 9.0 or later, can be downloaded free of charge from the App Store. They’ve open-sourced the Mac menu bar app so anyone can enhanced it (project files are available on GitHub).