Troubleshooting

A cell shows a dash

An en dash means no reading, never zero. Either this Mac does not have that metric — common with a widget someone else made — or the metric has stopped reporting: a disk was ejected, a VPN interface went away. A reading that has not arrived within three of its own sampling intervals is treated as gone. It comes back by itself when the reading does.

For a widget from somewhere else, the import sheet told you which metrics this Mac lacks; make sensors lists everything it has.

A sensor is missing, or reads wrong

Temperatures, fans and power come from undocumented interfaces that a macOS update can move. When one is missing, Caliper offers none of its metrics rather than showing a wrong number. A fanless Mac has no fan metrics at all.

Caliper sends no telemetry and no crash reports, so an issue is the only way anyone learns a macOS update broke a sensor. Use the sensor template, and include the output of make sensors, your Mac model and chip, and your macOS version.

No notifications

In order:

1. Has the breach lasted 30 seconds? A notification waits that long by design. The colour in the menu bar does not.
2. Does the cell have thresholds? A cell with none never alerts. See Alerts.
3. Are they allowed? System Settings ▸ Notifications ▸ Caliper.
4. Is alertsEnabled false in layout.json?
5. Is it a build without a bundle — make run or swift run? Those cannot post notifications, and write alerts to the system log instead. Build the app with make app.

A menu bar item disappeared

• It may be behind the notch. On a MacBook with a notch, items that do not fit are hidden by macOS, not Caliper. Fewer or narrower widgets, or a lower density, make room.
• It may be hidden. Check the checkbox beside its name in the editor.
• It may be on the desktop. A small window icon beside its name in the editor’s sidebar means it lives on the desktop; Show On ▸ Menu Bar brings it back.

With no item left to right-click, open Caliper again from Applications: while it is running, that opens the editor.

Update items are missing from the menu

A copy you built yourself has no update feed, so it has no update items — only a release updates itself. The same goes for Launch at Login in a bundle-less build. See Install and run.

“Caliper can’t be opened” on another Mac

A copy built without a Developer ID is signed ad hoc, and Gatekeeper refuses it anywhere but the Mac that built it. Download a release instead, or see Releasing to sign and notarise your own.

My widgets are gone

If layout.json could not be read, Caliper kept a copy beside it as layout.json.unreadable and started from the default widget. Files and uninstalling says how to recover it.

Reporting a problem

Use the issue templates. The first thing any report needs is the version and build from About Caliper, your Mac model and chip, and your macOS version.