I wanted to see live Formula 1 data on my desktop while watching the race — not buried in an app or a browser tab, but always visible in the corner of my screen. So I built a widget that pulls from two free public APIs and renders everything directly on the macOS desktop.

Here's what went into it and what I learned along the way.

What it looks like

During a live session the widget shows:

Live standings — position, driver code, gap to leader, last lap time, tyre compound and age, pit stop count

Race Control banner — Safety Car, Virtual Safety Car, Red Flag with colour-coded flashing overlay

Side panel — Team radio recordings (playable), all RC messages, track weather

Audio streams — ARD, BBC Radio 5, talkSPORT, ORF Sport Plus and more, played via mpv

Outside of race weekends it shows the championship standings, the full calendar and a countdown to the next event.

Tech stack

Layer Tool

Widget host Übersicht — renders JSX widgets directly on the macOS desktop

Frontend JSX (React-like syntax, no…