This morning I had one job: pull together my expenses and send them to my accountant by 3:00. Instead, I also built an entire macOS app. I sent the expenses at 3:01.
The Problem
Here's something that has been annoying me for a while. macOS Reminders (and Calendar, and Mail, and basically any app that sends notification banners) will sometimes stick a persistent banner on your screen. The only way to get rid of it is to reach over to the trackpad and click the tiny close button.
There is no built-in keyboard shortcut to dismiss a notification banner on macOS. Apple just never added one.
I asked Gemini about it, and it pointed me to an existing utility that does exactly this. But I wasn't fully focused when I read the description. I saw "pay what you want" and my brain processed that as "paid." So I decided to build my own.
By the time I realized the other tool was actually free, I was already halfway done. At that point, might as well finish it.
BannerSweep
I'm calling it BannerSweep. It does one thing: you press a keyboard shortcut (default is Cmd+Escape), and it dismisses whatever notification banner is currently on your screen. That's the whole app.
It runs in the background, uses almost no resources, and you can either show it in the menu bar or hide it completely so it feels like a native macOS feature. Which it should be, honestly. Apple should have shipped this years ago.
I'll be adding it to my apps directory and setting up a paid version through LemonSqueezy once I finalize the build. For now, the app page is up with details on what it does.
The Expenses
While I was building BannerSweep, I was also pulling together my expenses for my accountant. Receipts, transactions, categorizing everything. The deadline was 3:00.
I got them together at 2:59 and hit send at 3:01. Two minutes late. Close enough. The app was worth it.
Also Today
Before all of this, I published a post about fixing macOS upload dialog freezes (short version: eject your spinning external drive and rebuild Launch Services), and updated an older post about email infrastructure with the resolution to my GitHub suspension. Turns out I was shipping code fast enough that GitHub's automated systems flagged me. They reviewed it and reinstated everything.
Productive morning.
Enjoyed this post?
Get notified when I publish something new. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.