Support

Quick answers below. If your situation isn't covered, email observatory@priet.us — include your macOS version, Observatory version, and what you were trying to do.

Getting started

  1. Open Observatory and go to Settings.
  2. Paste your Grafana base URL, e.g. https://grafana.example.com. The host must be reachable from your Mac and must serve a valid TLS certificate.
  3. Create an API token in Grafana (Administration → Service accounts) with at least Viewer on the data sources you'll be querying. Paste it into Observatory.
  4. Pick a default data source. From there you can browse dashboards and star panels as favorites.
  5. Right-click a desktop widget → Edit Widget to assign one of your favorites to a slot.

Widgets show "—" or "No data"

  • Confirm the panel renders in Grafana itself with the same time range Observatory uses (last 1 hour by default).
  • Open Observatory → Settings and tap Test connection. If that fails, the API token is the most likely cause.
  • Some Grafana panels reference template variables ($node, $job, etc.). Observatory substitutes a default set; you can override them in Settings → Template variables.
  • If the widget refreshed within the last few minutes but still shows "—", remove and re-add it from the desktop — macOS sometimes pins a stale timeline.

TLS and self-signed certificates

Observatory only talks to hosts that present a certificate trusted by macOS. For homelab setups the simplest path is a free certificate from Let's Encrypt via a reverse proxy (Caddy, Traefik, nginx). Self-signed certificates are intentionally rejected — there's no toggle for that.

Pro upgrade and restoring purchases

  • Pro is a one-time in-app purchase that unlocks the Medium and Large widget families.
  • If you've bought Pro on a previous Mac (or after reinstalling), open Settings → Restore purchases. Apple will reactivate the entitlement on the same Apple ID at no charge.
  • Refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.

Reset Observatory

To wipe the configuration (URL, token, favorites) without reinstalling, quit the app and remove its container: 

rm -rf ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.us.priet.observatory

Reopen Observatory and you'll be back at the empty Settings screen. Your Pro entitlement is held by Apple, not by this file — you can always restore it.

Loki, alerting, and other roadmap items

Observatory currently focuses on time-series panels (Prometheus and any Grafana data source exposed through /api/ds/query). Loki log panels, alert rules, and value mappings are on the roadmap. If there's something you'd find useful, let us know.

Contact

observatory@priet.us — usually answered within a couple of working days.