Live scores / NFL
Live NFL scores, under your menu bar
Charmling is a Mac menu-bar app: a hand-drawn charm on a real elastic cord. Switch on Live Scores and it can hang a brass split-flap departure board there instead, showing the NFL match you follow. When something happens, the cord jolts, a bell rings once, and the board flips to the moment.
The board at its real size. Kansas City Chiefs is one tap away.
What rings a bell in NFL
The board rings for a touchdown, a field goal, and the final whistle. A jump of six or more points is read as a touchdown and a jump of three as a field goal, which is right almost always and wrong on a two-point conversion that lands on the same tick.
If several things happen between two checks you get one bell, for the most decisive of them, and the event stays on the board for twenty-two seconds before the score comes back.
Where the scores come from
ESPN's public NFL scoreboard, fetched once and handed to every Mac the same way. Your Mac never talks to them directly, and they never see you.
How to set it up
- Install Charmling and let the charm hang under your menu bar.
- Control-click the charm and tick 🔔 Live Scores (needs internet). It is off until you do, and it shows you exactly what it will fetch before it fetches anything.
- Pick NFL under Sports to follow.
- Star the team. Open the board, find the match, tap it. That is the whole interface — no form, no search box, no account.
Want the score visible all day? Choose Scoreboard from 🎐 Choose Charm and the charm itself becomes the board, with the score beside your menu bar icon.
What it sends about you
Nothing. Every few seconds your Mac asks one fixed address for one scoreboard of every live match. That request has no query string, no account, no licence key and no identifier — there is nowhere in it to put which team you follow, so it never does. The board comes back and your Mac picks your match out of it here.
Live Scores is the only connection Charmling opens for content, and it is off until you switch it on. The full accounting is on the privacy page.
Get it
One Mac, no subscription, free updates. Seven days free to try, then $14.99 outright. Live Scores is included — there is nothing extra to buy. Needs macOS 13 or later.