15 - Appendix
Reference material that didn’t fit cleanly into the chapter flow but is worth having as a single page.
15.1 - Keyboard shortcuts
V1 inherits the standard macOS shortcuts and adds a small set for the timeline. Most of what you’d expect from a Mac app works the way you’d expect.
Window and app
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Cmd-, | Open Settings |
| Cmd-Q | Quit Tempo |
| Cmd-W | Close window (window stays alive in dock; menubar item still active) |
| Cmd-H | Hide Tempo |
| Cmd-Option-H | Hide other apps |
| Cmd-M | Minimise window to dock |
Selection and feed
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Click | Select a single event |
| Cmd-click | Toggle event selection (multi-select) |
| Shift-click | Select range from anchor to clicked event |
| Esc | Clear selection |
| Double-click on time picker | Jump to today |
Action panel (single selection)
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Click action button | Fire the action |
Action panel (multi-select)
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Esc | Clear selection |
| Click “Acknowledge all (N)“ | Bulk ack |
| Click “Dismiss all (N)“ | Bulk dismiss |
Score Editor
The Score Editor uses on-screen buttons for Save and Reset rather than dedicated keyboard shortcuts in V1. Standard text-field editing shortcuts (Cmd-A, Cmd-C, Cmd-V, Cmd-Z within an active text field) work as on any macOS form.
Menubar item
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Click menubar icon | Open menu |
| Menu → Settings… | Same as Cmd-, |
| Menu → Quit Tempo | Same as Cmd-Q (with menu shortcut “q” inside the menu) |
15.2 - macOS native integrations
A few standard macOS surfaces Tempo participates in:
URL scheme
Tempo registers the tempo:// URL scheme for deep linking:
tempo://event/<id>: focus the timeline on the event with the given ID (matches against both internalidandexternalID). The window comes forward automatically. Unknown IDs are silent no-ops
Use cases: an Apple Shortcut or a script that wants to jump to a specific event after some external action; a Hookmark link to a Tempo event from a note.
Drag and drop
- Drag a
.tempo-scorefile onto the Tempo dock icon or window → opens the Score Review Sheet - Drag a JSON file from
~/Library/Application Support/Tempo/Scores/to another location → standard macOS file copy
Sparkle auto-update
V1 ships with Sparkle. Tempo checks for updates on a configurable interval (default daily) and prompts you to install when a new version is available; you can also trigger a check manually from Tempo → Check for Updates… in the menubar. Updates are fetched from downloads.tempoapp.app and verified against an EdDSA signature embedded in the appcast.
Spotlight indexing, Quick Look previews for .tempo-score, and a Share Extension are not part of V1; they’re candidates for a future release.
15.3 - Privacy
Full privacy notice at tempoapp.app/privacy.
Short version:
- No accounts. No login, no signup, no email required to use Tempo
- No cloud sync. All data lives in
~/Library/Application Support/Tempo/on your Mac - No third-party telemetry. Tempo doesn’t ship analytics to any analytics service. V1 has no usage telemetry of any kind, opt-in or otherwise
- Calendar and Reminders access is via macOS EventKit and respects the system permission you granted. Calendar contents stay between Calendar.app, EventKit, and Tempo; nothing leaves your Mac
- The ingestion server binds to your LAN by default. Per-provider tokens authenticate every request. Audit log records every accept and reject
If you have specific concerns about what Tempo does with a particular kind of data, the privacy page goes into detail. The short version is: it’s all local, it’s all under your control, and the audit log is there for forensics if you ever want to verify it.
15.4 - License
Full license text at tempoapp.app/license. LICENSE.txt in the application bundle is the same.
Short version:
- Tempo 1.x is and will remain freeware: distributed free of charge, free for personal and commercial use. Existing and future 1.x releases stay free; whether a future major version (2.0) is paid is a data-driven decision (see below)
- Provided as-is, without warranty of any kind. You’re responsible for the scores you install and the actions they perform. The license & disclaimer are linked from the About panel in-app
- After v2 ships, v1 will continue to receive security fixes only: no new features, no behavioural changes. Direct support migrates to v2
The licensing approach is meant to be transparent: V1 is freeware-with-no-warranty, distributed broadly to find product-market fit. V2 is conditional and may be paid; that decision is data-driven, not date-driven.
15.5 - Credits
Tempo is built on the shoulders of a great deal of open-source software. The full credits live in the About panel in-app and in the LICENSE.txt of the application bundle.
Notable dependencies:
- Sparkle: auto-update framework for macOS apps. sparkle-project.org
- SQLite: embedded SQL database. sqlite.org
- SwiftUI / EventKit / Foundation: Apple frameworks
- SF Symbols: Apple’s icon library
The bundled scores reference and integrate with many third-party tools (Kopia, UniFi, Home Assistant, Uptime Kuma, GitHub Actions, Synology, the *arr stack (Sonarr / Radarr / Prowlarr), Jellyfin, Beszel, Vaultwarden, Pi-hole, Hazel, Todoist, and more), none of which are dependencies of Tempo itself; they’re upstream sources Tempo receives from.
Community-contributed scores beyond the bundled set live in the public score catalog and are credited in the catalog repo’s CONTRIBUTING.md and at the top of each score file.
End of guide
Thanks for reading.
If something didn’t land (a chapter that left you confused, a section that should have existed, a phrasing that read awkwardly) file an issue at github.com/caereforge/tempo-site/issues, or join the Discord at tempoapp.app/community.
Documentation is the surface that compensates for V1 not having a Visual Action Builder yet. We take it seriously, and we’d rather hear that something didn’t work than have you struggle through it alone.
- the Tempo docs