Blood Glucose Buddy
Your live Dexcom reading and trend arrow in your Mac menu bar or Windows tray, always one glance away. Optionally on your Discord profile too.
Website: bloodglucosebuddy.tanookistudios.com · Setup guide with screenshots: docs/SETUP.md
- Your number and arrow next to the clock, refreshed every five minutes from Dexcom Share, the same live feed the Follow app uses. Starts when you log in.
- A reading older than 15 minutes shows as No reading, never as a stale number.
- mg/dL or mmol/L. On Windows the tray number turns green, yellow or red against your own high and low lines.
- Dexcom password in the macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Manager. No account, no server, no analytics.
- Optional: Discord. Turn on Show on Discord and your reading appears under your name, as the number or just a colored dot (In range / High / Low). Off until you turn it on.
Free and open source, MIT licensed.
Not a medical device. Never make treatment decisions from Blood Glucose Buddy — use your Dexcom app or receiver. It reads Dexcom's unofficial Share feed, which can stop working without notice. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Dexcom or Discord.
Download
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| Mac (macOS 15+) | Latest release — signed and notarized by Apple. |
| Windows (Windows 11) | In testing. A test build is up; the full release follows once it's been tried on real PCs. Not yet code-signed, so Windows asks you to click More info → Run anyway the first time. |
Then follow the setup guide: turn on Dexcom Share and sign in. Discord is one more optional step.
Screenshots
Mac — the menu bar, its menu, and settings:
Windows — the tray menu and settings:
On Discord (optional) — drawings of what Discord shows, made from the same pictures the app sends:
| Number mode | Colored dot mode |
|---|
| |
Every screen is in the setup guide. All screenshots come from automated runs with made-up readings (see below), never a real account.
How it works
- Dexcom: Dexcom's official developer API delays data by an hour (three outside the US), so this reads Dexcom Share instead — the live feed the Follow app uses — with the user's own login. Share has to be on with at least one follower. Some accounts won't authenticate by email or phone; Find My Account ID opens Dexcom's own sign-in page and reads the account ID from the profile page address.
- Discord (optional, off by default): Rich Presence over the desktop app's local IPC (
$TMPDIR/discord-ipc-N on Mac, the \\.\pipe\discord-ipc-N named pipe on Windows). One shared Discord application ("Blood Glucose", ID 1558184055437004933) holds the arrow and dot pictures in assets/discord/. Setting a custom status from code would be a self-bot, which Discord bans, so this doesn't.
- What's shown:
mac/BloodGlucoseBuddy/Core/Presence.swift and windows/Core/Presence.cs — the same rules, tested on both sides.
Building
Mac
macOS 15+, Xcode 26, XcodeGen:
cd mac && xcodegen generate && open BloodGlucoseBuddy.xcodeproj
Not sandboxed: the Mac sandbox blocks Discord's local socket. To sign your own copy, change DEVELOPMENT_TEAM in mac/project.yml.
xcodebuild test -project mac/BloodGlucoseBuddy.xcodeproj -scheme BloodGlucoseBuddyTests -destination 'platform=macOS'
Windows
.NET 10 SDK. Builds on Windows, Mac or Linux:
dotnet test windows/Tests
dotnet publish windows/App -c Release -o dist/win
dist/win/BloodGlucoseBuddy.exe is one self-contained file. The Windows workflow builds it on a real Windows machine, runs the unit tests, runs --self-test (Credential Manager, the Start-with-Windows registry entry, the Discord pipe, Dexcom over HTTPS, tray icons), and renders the screenshots with --screenshots.
Screenshots, regenerated
- Mac:
scripts/capture-screenshots-mac.sh runs the UI tests in mac/UITests, which drive the real app with BGB_DEMO=1. That one switch gives the app throwaway settings, an in-memory password, made-up readings, and no Dexcom, Keychain, Discord or login item. The script fails if any screen is missing. The app is on screen for about a minute.
- Windows: the workflow's
--screenshots step; download the windows-build artifact.
- Discord drawings: rendered from
site/style.css.
Releasing
- Bump
MARKETING_VERSION in mac/project.yml and <Version> in windows/App/BloodGlucoseBuddy.csproj, and add notes to the top of site/versions.json. After new Mac screenshots, copy docs/screenshots/mac/05-menu.png to site/shots/mac-menu.png (the site's front page).
scripts/release-mac.sh — tests, builds, signs, notarizes and zips into dist/.- Windows:
dotnet publish windows/App -c Release -o dist/win.
gh release create v<version> dist/BloodGlucoseBuddy-<version>-mac.zip dist/BloodGlucoseBuddy-<version>-windows.exenode site/build.mjs --deploy
License
MIT. Made by Maddie at Tanooki Studios.
