Uncategorised decision
Cooldock
A technically capable developer can build a basic second-dock with a few live widgets (prior art exists), but reproducing the polished, integrated, signed product with broad widget catalogue, installer/licensing, and ongoing support is heavy — paying is reasonable for the finished experience.
Visit website↗Built by Solt Wagner, who ships 7 products in this index
Not priced
No pricing page we fetched carried a figure, so there is nothing to compare against. The build side is still real.
$100one-off200 h to build
$0/mo5 h/mo upkeep
No published price to break even against.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Cooldock alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Launch the second dock, add/configure live widgets and shortcuts, interact with widgets (open apps, view data, trigger quick actions), persist layout and settings.
What it still won’t have
- Polish of a shipped commercial product (animations, design polish, edge-case UX)
- Built-in paid-license, payments, refunds, and customer portal
- Ongoing curated widget catalogue and integrations (e.g., Dropbox, Supabase, Shopify, Resend) out of the box
- Mac app notarization, cross-device licensing management, and official support
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
No published price
Cooldock does not publish a price we could read, so there is nothing to compare against. What building costs is below.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a native macOS Swift/SwiftUI app (macOS 14+ target) that implements a second dock with live widgets. Core features in scope: frameless always-on dock window with multi-display support; widget host API and renderer; example widgets: Weather (public API), Now Playing (system media), Calendar & Events (EventKit), Clipboard history; local profiles and settings stored in Core Data or SQLite; basic settings UI; packaging, code-signing, and an auto-update check. Out of scope: commercial licensing/checkout, server-side analytics, third-party paid integrations (Shopify/Supabase/Resend), and an online widget marketplace. Require error handling for widget failures, permission prompts, unit and UI tests for key flows, and CI that builds signed installer artifacts.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 3 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score67
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 3
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official pricingCooldock — official product and pricing
- open sourceglzr-io/zebar
- open sourcejosejuanqm/docky
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
