Count Coffee, Water or Anything Daily in the Mac Menu Bar

What you need

Multimeter for macOS 13 or later, $19.99 once.
Nothing to install.

Set it up

Make the tally command. This writes it to ~/.local/bin and counts your first coffee:

Terminal (once)

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin && cat > ~/.local/bin/tally <<'EOF'
#!/bin/zsh
# tally coffee      add one to today's coffee count
# tally coffee 0    set it to a number
name=${1:-coffee}; f=~/.multimeter/$name.txt; today=$(date +%F)
mkdir -p ~/.multimeter
if [[ -n $2 ]]; then n=$2
elif [[ -f $f && $(sed -n 2p $f) == $today ]]; then n=$(( $(head -1 $f) + 1 ))
else n=1; fi
printf '%s\n%s\n' $n $today > $f.tmp && mv $f.tmp $f
echo $n
EOF
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/tally && ~/.local/bin/tally coffee

Add a File meter and choose ~/.multimeter/coffee.txt (Shift-Command-Period shows dot folders in the file dialog). The first line of the file is today’s count.
Set the range to 0 to your daily limit, with alerts on High values.
Make counting quick: a Shortcuts action Run Shell Script with ~/.local/bin/tally coffee and a keyboard shortcut, or a Raycast script command.

Multimeter settings

In Customize This Meter… (from the meter’s menu):

Settings for this meter
Setting	Value
Source	File
File	`~/.multimeter/coffee.txt`
Range	0 to 5
Alerts	High values: warning 3, critical 5
Label	`COFFEE`
Face	Tally Marks, Hearts or XP Bar

Tested: Run on October 29, 2026: three runs printed 1, 2 and 3, the file’s first line read 3, and tally coffee 0 reset it.

More on this source, including every format it reads, in the File guide.

Limits

The count resets with your first tally of a new day, so until then the meter still shows yesterday’s total.

Variations

Water, breaks, anything

Each name gets its own file: tally water writes ~/.multimeter/water.txt. Add one File meter per name.

Without a file

Send the number straight to a Sent Value meter instead: open -g "multimeter://set?key=coffee&value=$(tally coffee)".

Troubleshooting

What the meter says, why, and what to do
Symptom	Cause	Fix
command not found: tally	`~/.local/bin` isn’t on your Terminal’s PATH.	Run it as `~/.local/bin/tally`, or add the folder to PATH in `~/.zshrc`.
The meter shows 2026	A different file format put the date first.	Use the command as written: count on the first line, date on the second.

Questions

Does this work in the Mac App Store version?

Yes. File meters and Sent Value meters work in every version; the tally command runs from Terminal, Shortcuts or Raycast, not from Multimeter.

Count cups of coffee (or anything) in your Mac menu bar