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 v1 is distributed free of charge, forever. Free for personal and commercial use, no restrictions on what kind of homelab/work/setup you use it in
- 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 — none of which are dependencies of Tempo itself; they’re upstream sources Tempo receives from.
The community contributions to the public score catalog — Proxmox, Jellyfin, Vaultwarden, Pi-hole, Hazel, and more — 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