Interestingly, Sparkle already sort of has a "title bar mode", but it needs some careful design attention. It's an interesting challenge, really, to think about how that affordance should be presented in the myriad macOS titlebar/toolbar configurations…
I’ve fantasized for years about submitting a PR to add something like this (and eventually change the default!), but keep getting wrapped up in other projects.
Could I possibly nerd-snipe anyone into polishing something like this non-modal update flow into an official UI for Sparkle? weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2026/04/28/u...
Fun related concept is "auteurial time density"—how many hours/years of *one person's* idiosyncratic creative perspective is represented here? Gaudi, Welles, Klint, Caro, etc
Thinking about "creative time density": how many person-hrs/yrs went into this specific artifact/place/experience?
It's a reliable awe trigger for me. Performers spending 100s of hours prepping a few minutes of material for a show, a scholar spending a decade on a book, a Ghibli film, cathedrals.
People often ask me how it feels to see it used everywhere, and I always say: annoying and embarrassing! Those update modals interrupt me exactly when I'm trying to use the app.
I created Sparkle a lifetime ago, when I was seventeen. Then I moved onto other things, and kind maintainers dutifully kept that original intrusive modal UI going for two decades. (!!)