Show Recent Earthquakes (USGS) in the Mac Menu Bar

What you need

Multimeter for macOS 13 or later, $19.99 once.
Nothing for the worldwide count. For nearby, your coordinates and the Script source.

Set it up

Worldwide, magnitude 4.5 and up in the past day: add a Web Address meter with this address and the key path metadata.count.
Web address
```
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/v1.0/summary/4.5_day.geojson
```

Near you, magnitude 2.5 and up within 300 km in the last 24 hours: a Script meter with your coordinates (alerts on High values, critical at 1, notify on critical):

Command

curl -s -m 8 "https://earthquake.usgs.gov/fdsnws/event/1/count?format=geojson&latitude=37.77&longitude=-122.42&maxradiuskm=300&minmagnitude=2.5&starttime=$(date -u -v-1d +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S)"

Refresh every 5 minutes.

Multimeter settings

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

Settings for this meter
Setting	Value
Source	Web Address (worldwide) or Script (nearby)
Web address	`https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/v1.0/summary/4.5_day.geojson`
Key path	`metadata.count` (Web Address) or `count` (Script)
Refresh every	5 minutes
Range	0 to 40 worldwide, 0 to 5 nearby
Alerts	Nearby: High values, critical 1
Label	`QUAKE`
Face	Tally Marks, Columns or Label & Value

Tested: Run on October 29, 2026: 23 quakes of magnitude 4.5 and up worldwide in the past day; 4 of magnitude 2.5 and up within 300 km of San Francisco.

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

Limits

The feeds are capped files: stay with the _day feeds for 2.5 and up. The all_week feed is larger than the 256 KB a meter reads.

Variations

Other feeds

significant_day, 2.5_day, 4.5_week, significant_month. Same key path.

Troubleshooting

What the meter says, why, and what to do
Symptom	Cause	Fix
The script didn’t print a number	The command failed or printed an error message instead.	Run the exact command in Terminal. If it works there, check for tools that live outside the meter’s PATH and use their full path (`which tool`).
The script took longer than 10 seconds	A slow network call. Multimeter stops scripts after 10 seconds.	Keep the `-m` timeout on curl, and refresh less often.
Scripts need the version from multimeterapp.com	This copy of Multimeter came from the Mac App Store, which can’t run scripts.	Use the direct download version, or run the command from cron or launchd and point a File meter at its output.

Questions

How fast does a quake show up?

USGS posts most US quakes within a few minutes and worldwide ones within about 20; the meter adds up to one refresh.

Show recent earthquakes in your Mac menu bar