Fresh Brews: TickerBar and DemoTrading Join the Menu
A menu bar ticker for live stock and crypto prices, plus a trading simulator that practises on real market data with fake money.
Two new drinks slipped onto the Frappe shelf with almost no announcement, and this batch is the market counter. TickerBar puts the prices you actually follow in your menu bar, where a glance replaces a browser tab. DemoTrading puts a full crypto exchange on your desktop, funded with fake money but fed with real prices, so you can learn how trading works before a single real dollar is at stake.
The cafe is at 119 apps now, and Frappe has quietly become the live-data shelf: sky traffic in FlightTrack and GlobeSiphon, and now market data in these two. The waitlist stays empty.
TickerBar: the prices you follow, one glance away
TickerBar is for anyone who checks the same handful of tickers several times a day. Stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrencies sit side by side in the menu bar, updating on their own, the day's move shown next to every price.
There's no account to make and no API key to paste. Install it, add your symbols, done. Search works by name or ticker: type "vanguard" or type "VOO", and the results say plainly whether each hit is a stock, an ETF or a coin before you add it. Pin the one you care about, or let the menu bar cycle through the whole list at whatever speed suits you. The full list is one click away in the dropdown, each symbol with its price, its percentage move and its change in dollars.
The details are where it earns its place. It knows when the market is shut, so it stops chasing stock prices overnight and at the weekend, while crypto keeps updating around the clock because it's moving. If a price feed starts refusing requests, the last known price stays on screen with the time it was taken rather than an error box, and a status page says exactly what happened and when it will try again. Prices are remembered between launches, so the menu bar has real numbers before the first refresh finishes. Drag rows into the order you think in, choose the refresh rate and the price format, and close the window whenever you like; the app carries on quietly in the menu bar, a real desktop app with proper menus and full light and dark appearance.
DemoTrading: real prices, money that isn't real
DemoTrading is a crypto trading simulator for the moment before you commit real capital. It puts a full exchange terminal on your own computer: a live candlestick chart, an order book, a trades tape and a buy and sell ticket. Every quote, candle and order book level streams from Binance's public market data, so a trade you place at two in the afternoon behaves exactly as it would on the real thing.
Your balance, orders and history live in a file you own. Every account is a .trade file you save wherever you like; keep one for practice and another for a strategy you're testing, open both at once in their own windows, and reopen either by double-clicking it. Move it, copy it, back it up. The account takes its name from the file, so there's no second name to keep in step.
The mechanics behave properly, which is the whole point of practising. A limit order rests until the price actually reaches it, then fills at your price; your balance is reserved while it waits, so you can never spend the same dollar twice. Every trade carries a simulated 0.10% fee on both sides, exactly as a real exchange would charge, and the profit and loss is computed the way traders actually judge themselves: average entry price, unrealized PnL on open positions, realized PnL booked per trade. The chart draws eight timeframes from one minute to one month, with volume under the candles, moving averages at 7, 25 and 99, and RSI in its own pane with 30 and 70 marked, the same three periods Binance draws, so nothing has to be relearned when you graduate.
The portfolio adds up, literally. Cash sits in the list as a holding beside your coins, each with its weight, so the rows come to exactly the equity figure at the top of the window. A buy shifts value from cash into a coin, so the equity figure stays exactly where it was; the trade costs you nothing but the fee. A Stats tab draws the equity curve and reports total return, win rate, best and worst trade, average win against average loss and the largest drawdown. There are four tabs and no configuration maze: Trade, Portfolio, Orders and Stats. Blow the account up and reset with any balance you choose; nothing is permanent except what you learn.
Two drinks at the market counter
Both land in Frappe, and both follow the same rule: the only thing they ask the internet for is public price data. Your watchlist, your trades, your history, all of it stays in files on your machine.
The money shelf is quietly becoming complete. MoneyCoffee tracks what you spend, Portfocino (from yesterday's Fresh Brews) tracks what you own, TickerBar watches what the market is doing right now, and DemoTrading lets you find out what you'd do about it before real money is on the line.
One subscription, 119 apps. Start your 7-day free trial at https://getapps.cafe and see the full menu.