Perron
Your next Swiss departure, in the menu bar.
A macOS menu-bar timetable for Swiss public transport. Pick your stops once and it shows your next departure — based on your location if you want.
Requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later · Intel and Apple Silicon · Changelog
The panel
Open it, read it, go
Save your connections once. Perron shows the one that matters — picked by hand, or by where you are.
The schedule, with the delay beside it — 14:44 +1, never 14:45.
Ranked by arrival — and it says so when the pick isn’t the next train.
The whole connection on one card — every leg, its line, its track.
Your saved connections. Pick one — or let your location pick.
No more checking too late.
And no more taking out your phone in a meeting, just to glance at SBB. The next departure is already on your screen.
It warns you when things break
Cancellations and disruptions show up where you’d look — a warning in the menu bar, and the operator’s own message on the card.
A bookmark for every connection
The ↗ beside a saved connection opens it in the sbb.ch timetable — same stops, same day, ready for a ticket.
Avoid changes
Tell Perron how much longer you’d ride to stay in one seat — from always the earliest arrival to up to twice as long.
Everything else is a switch — location, the track chip, the usage counts.
What it sends — and what it never sends
- Sends
- Your two saved station names and the query time — to opentransportdata.swiss, not to me.
- Sends
- Anonymous usage counts that carry no station name, id or coordinate — and you can switch them off in Settings.
- Sends
- A check for updates — the Perron version and the macOS version, nothing else.
- Never
- Your position. It is worked out on your Mac and never transmitted.
- Never
- Your name or an account — there is no account. The privacy page lists everything.
What it does not do
No tickets, no maps, no route planning. Perron ranks the connections the timetable already returned for a route you saved — it does not go looking for journeys.
Free, and it stays free — after a 14-day trial Perron adds one dismissible row asking for support and changes nothing else. Paying is voluntary and silences that row. Nothing is withheld, disabled, degraded or time-limited — ever. See terms.
Data: opentransportdata.swiss — check SBB before you travel.
Perron is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Schweizerische Bundesbahnen SBB, opentransportdata.swiss, or the Federal Office of Transport. Service designations such as IC, IR and S are used descriptively.
FAQ
Is there an official SBB app for Mac?
No. SBB Mobile is iOS and Android. There are Swiss transit apps in the Mac App Store, but they are iPhone and iPad apps made available on Apple Silicon Macs — they open a window, and none of them puts a departure in the menu bar.
Does it run on an Intel Mac?
Yes. macOS 14 or later, Intel or Apple Silicon — the download is one universal binary.
Where does the data come from?
From opentransportdata.swiss, the federal open transport platform, via Open Journey Planner.
Does it know where I am?
Only if you switch it on — and the answer never leaves your Mac.
Does it show delays and platform changes?
Yes — the schedule with the delay beside it, plus the operator's own disruption text.
Is it really free?
Yes. After 14 days one dismissible row asks for support; paying is voluntary and silences it. Nothing is withheld, disabled, degraded or time-limited.
More from Tidymill
-
Files renamed by what's inside them — nothing to set up.
-
Clears the near-identical shots out of your Apple Photos library.