Window on the World

Install Window on the World

Window on the World runs on macOS 15 Sequoia or later, on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. After buying, download the app zip from your Polar receipt, unzip it, and drag Window on the World to your Applications folder.

The app is signed and notarized by Apple. Confirm Open at the normal first-launch prompt.

The app works without a license key. The key in your receipt turns on automatic updates: enter it in Window on the World → License…. Once a day, the app checks for a new version, shows what’s new, and installs it with Install and Relaunch. Window on the World → Check for Updates… checks right away. A key works on 3 Macs. To move it to another Mac, choose License… → Deactivate This Mac first. Your receipt always has the latest version, too.

The wall

The first time you open it, the wall has webcams of famous places around the world, grouped by area. Each tile shows the latest picture with the webcam’s name.

The sidebar has Favorites and All at the top, then the areas. Click an area to see its webcams. Its places show up under it, and a click on a place narrows the wall to that town.

Keep the webcams you like and delete the rest: right-click a tile and choose Delete.

Add a webcam

Click + in the toolbar, or choose File → New Webcam (⌘N), and paste a link. It can be:

• the page of a webcam on Windy, Roundshot or Panomax
• a tourism office, ski area or park page with a webcam on it
• the address of a picture, like https://live-image.panomax.com/cams/1365/recent_default.jpg
• the address of a live stream, ending in .m3u8

The app reads the link and says what it found: “Live video, with a still for the grid”, “A wide panorama. Drag to look around”, “A still image that refreshes on its own”, or “A still image, plus the day’s timelapse”. Give the webcam a name, type the place it belongs to, and pick how often the picture refreshes.

When a page has no picture or stream the app can find, it can still show the page itself, as a Page webcam.

A link you already added is recognized, so you don’t end up with the same webcam twice.

Areas and places

An area is a region, like the Alps or the Pacific coast. A place is a town or a spot inside it.

• New Area, at the bottom of the sidebar or File → New Area (⌥⌘N), adds an area.
• New Place, at the bottom of the sidebar or File → New Place (⇧⌘N), adds a place to the area you’re looking at.
• Right-click an area or a place to Rename or Delete it. Deleting an area deletes its places and their webcams, and the window says how many before you confirm.
• Right-click a webcam and choose Move to to put it in another place.

Watch a webcam

Click a tile, or right-click it and choose Watch, to see it full size.

• A live stream plays.
• A panorama can be dragged left and right. Sweep pans across it slowly on its own.
• The buttons at the top switch between the Picture, the Live stream, Today (the day’s timelapse, on Windy webcams) and the webcam’s Site.

The menu next to them has Edit, Copy Link, Open in Browser, Move to and Delete.

Favorites

Right-click a tile and choose Favorite, or click the star when you watch it, and the webcam shows up in Favorites, the first item in the sidebar. The app opens on Favorites.

Refreshing

Each picture refreshes on the interval you picked for it, only while the app is in front. A webcam in the background, or the whole app hidden, downloads nothing.

A live stream keeps a still picture for its tile, taken from the stream every 10 minutes.

View → Refresh (⌘R), or the arrow in the toolbar, refreshes every webcam on the wall right away.

Where your webcams are saved

Your areas, places and webcams are saved in ~/Library/Application Support/Window on the World/library.json. Copy that file to move your wall to another Mac.

Troubleshooting

A tile says it couldn’t load the picture

The website that publishes the webcam didn’t answer, or answered with an error. Webcams go offline for maintenance, and some are switched off at night or out of season. Open the webcam and click Try Again, or Open in Browser to check the webcam’s own page.

The app can’t find a webcam on a page

Some pages load their webcam with a player that hides the picture’s address. Try the address of the picture or the stream itself: right-click the picture in your browser and copy its address. If nothing works, add it as a Page webcam, which shows the whole page.

A webcam shows an old picture

Some webcams only take a picture every 10 or 30 minutes, or stop during the night. Open the webcam: the line under it says how long ago the app got the picture.

Privacy

The app downloads pictures and streams straight from the webcams’ own websites. Once a day it sends its license key to updates.flaviocopes.com to check for a new version, and about once a week it checks the key with Polar. There are no accounts and no analytics.