Connect your calendar, and fix what looks wrong.

Connect your Canvas calendar

duebar reads a link Canvas gives you called a calendar feed. It lists everything you have due. You don't log in to anything, and you don't need permission from your school.

1. Open Canvas in your browser, the way you normally do.
2. Click Calendar in the menu down the left-hand side.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the right-hand column and click Calendar Feed.
4. A box appears with a long link in it. Click the link once to select all of it, then copy it (⌘C).
5. In duebar, click the menu bar item, then Settings…, and paste the link into the box. Click Add.

If it worked, duebar says something like "Found 14 upcoming assignments." and your next deadline shows up in the menu bar within a few seconds.

The link looks roughly like this:

Using Google Classroom instead?

duebar takes any calendar link, not only Canvas ones.

1. Open Google Calendar.
2. Hover over your class calendar in the left-hand list, click the ⋮ beside it, and choose Settings and sharing.
3. Scroll down to Integrate calendar.
4. Copy the Secret address in iCal format.
5. Paste it into duebar the same way.

You can add more than one link. duebar merges them into a single list, and if the same assignment turns up in two of them it only appears once.

What the colours and numbers mean

The countdown reads 3d 4h when there's a day or more left, 4h 12m under a day, 12m under an hour, and due now in the last minute before the deadline. It updates once a minute — not once a second, which would drain your battery for a number you can't act on any faster.

If something looks wrong

The menu bar says "duebar · set up"

No calendar link has been added yet. Click it and the Settings window opens.

Canvas rejected the link (401)

Feed links change whenever you reset them, and an old one stops working immediately. Copy it again from Calendar → Calendar Feed.

"That link works, but it isn't a calendar file"

Almost always the address of the Canvas page you were looking at, rather than the Calendar Feed link. Go back to Calendar → Calendar Feed and copy the link inside that box.

An assignment is missing

Four things to check, in order. Is it further away than your look-ahead window? That's Settings → General → Show assignments due within, and it's 14 days by default. Is it already past due? Past-due items are hidden — see below. Does it have a due date in Canvas at all? Anything with no due date isn't in the feed, so duebar can't see it.

Finally, open Settings → Feeds and look for an orange warning line. If your feed contains a due date duebar couldn't make sense of, it says so there and tells you how many. duebar hides those rather than showing you a time that might be wrong — but it won't hide the fact that it did. If you see that line, email me the feed link and I'll fix the parser.

Something I already turned in is still showing

A calendar feed can't tell duebar whether you submitted anything — Canvas doesn't put that in the feed. So duebar hides items once they're past due rather than pretending to know. If you'd rather see them for a day afterwards, there's a switch in Settings → General.

It says "Updated 2d ago" with a warning

duebar hasn't managed to reach your feed for over a day, so what you're looking at is saved from last time. Check your internet, then check the link is still valid. It says this rather than quietly showing you old numbers as if they were fresh.

Nothing appears in the menu bar at all

Your menu bar may be full — that happens easily on a laptop with a notch. Quit some other menu bar apps, or if you use a menu bar manager like Bartender or Ice, check duebar isn't hidden in it.

Notifications aren't arriving

Turn them on in Settings → Notifications — they're off until you ask for them, and macOS asks permission at that point. If you said no by accident, re-allow duebar in System Settings → Notifications.

Privacy

duebar makes exactly two kinds of network request: to the calendar links you pasted, and to check for a new version when you click that button. Nothing else, ever.

There is no account, no sign-in, no analytics, no crash reporting and no licence check. Your assignments are stored on your Mac only. Your feed link is in the Keychain. The app is sandboxed and can't read anything else on your computer.

Requirements

macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple Silicon or Intel.