AirJedi

A lightweight macOS menu bar app for tracking nearby aircraft using ADS-B receivers.

   

Features

• Menu Bar Integration — Lives in your menu bar, always accessible without cluttering your Dock
• Multiple ADS-B Sources — Connect to dump1090, SBS (BaseStation), or Beast protocol receivers
• Real-time Updates — See aircraft appear and update as they fly through your area, with color-coded freshness indicators
• Configurable Alerts — Get notified for proximity, specific squawk codes, watchlist aircraft, or aircraft types
• Highlight Colors — Assign custom colors to alert rules for visual identification
• Mini-map View — Quick visual overview of aircraft positions relative to your location
• Distance Filtering — Focus on aircraft within a specific range

Requirements

• macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later
• An ADS-B receiver accessible on your network (e.g., RTL-SDR with dump1090, FlightAware PiAware, or similar)

Installation

From Release

Download the latest release from the Releases page and drag AirJedi.app to your Applications folder.

From Source

# Install xcodegen if you haven't already
brew install xcodegen

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/airjedi/airjedi-notifier.git
cd airjedi-notifier

# Build and install
make install

Usage

1. Launch AirJedi from your Applications folder
2. Click the airplane icon in the menu bar
3. Open Settings to configure your ADS-B sources
4. Add a source with your receiver's IP address and select the protocol

Supported Protocols

Protocol	Default Port	Description
Dump1090	8080	HTTP JSON polling — works with dump1090-fa, readsb, tar1090
SBS/BaseStation	30003	TCP text stream — widely supported format
Beast	30005	TCP binary AVR frames — low-latency, efficient

Configuration

AirJedi stores settings in ~/Library/Preferences/com.airjedi.notifier.plist. You can configure:

• Sources — Multiple ADS-B receiver connections
• Display Settings — Maximum aircraft to show, stale threshold
• Location — Your position for distance calculations (or use automatic location)
• Alerts — Rules for proximity, squawk codes, ICAO watchlist, and aircraft types

Alert Rules

Create custom alert rules to be notified when specific conditions are met:

• Proximity — Aircraft within a specified distance
• Squawk Code — Emergency (7500, 7600, 7700) or custom codes
• Watchlist — Specific ICAO hex codes you want to track
• Aircraft Type — Filter by aircraft type designator

Each rule can have a custom highlight color for easy visual identification in the aircraft list.

Building

This project uses XcodeGen to generate the Xcode project from project.yml.

make build      # Generate project and build (Debug)
make run        # Build and launch the app
make release    # Build release configuration
make clean      # Remove build artifacts
make install    # Build release and install to /Applications
make generate   # Regenerate Xcode project only

Project Structure

airjedi-notifier/
├── Sources/
│   ├── App/           # App entry point, state management, settings
│   ├── Models/        # Data models (Aircraft, Coordinate, etc.)
│   ├── Providers/     # ADS-B protocol implementations
│   ├── Services/      # Business logic (alerts, notifications)
│   ├── Utilities/     # Shared helpers (time formatting, etc.)
│   └── Views/         # SwiftUI views
├── Resources/
│   └── Info.plist
├── project.yml        # XcodeGen configuration
└── Makefile           # Build automation

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE for details.

Acknowledgments

• dump1090 and its many forks for ADS-B decoding
• The aviation enthusiast community for protocol documentation