This Little Retro Display Box Is Surprisingly Useful

Sometimes, just a quick glance at your information is all you need.

That's what the makers of the Tidbyt retro-style display are counting on. The Tidbyt display is a little box of information that (hopefully) means you won't need to pick up your phone. So, when this little box ended up on my radar, of course, I wanted to give it a try. I wasn't prepared for how useful it would be.

At first glance, Tidbyt looks... meh. It's a display. There are no speakers or mics, so you can't stream music to it or take calls on it. All it does is scroll through information. So, how useful could it be? Well, let me tell you.

The Tidbyt Display

The display itself is quite good-looking if you're into the richer vibe of wood. You can get it in walnut or beech, and once connected, it's reminiscent of an old sign like you might see on a bank. It's made up of dots (technically not pixels, but that's what I think of) of LED lights that form an almost-fluid display of information against a black background.

I hear you... There are already so many displays in our homes. But trust me when I tell you that you don't have a display like this one. Functionally, it has adjustable brightness, but you can also set it to automatically dim at sunset, and there's even a night mode that drops the brightness significantly on a schedule that you can define (especially useful if you keep your Tidbyt in the bedroom).

You can also control how fast the display cycles through the apps/widgets that you choose so you can make them faster or slower. Don't worry about a bunch of flashy, blinking lights, though. I haven't seen anything like that. It's more like a scrolling ticker of information.

But Really, Is Tidbyt Useful?

Let's get to what you really want to know: Is Tidbyt something you'll use? Let me answer that with a question: How many times per day do you pick up your smartphone to check the weather, stock prices, bitcoin prices, a bus schedule, a flight schedule, or see what that song that's playing on Spotify is, or what meeting you have coming up next?

For me, that's a lot. And I don't even live in an area where public transportation is the primary means of getting around. I feel like I'm constantly looking at some little bit of information. And the problem with that is that once you pick up your phone, it's hard to put it down.

That's where Tidbyt comes in. The information you want stays in front of you, and you don't ever have to pick up your phone. Wanna know when your next meeting is? It's on your display. Or, in my case (and honestly, I'm completely geeking over this), when is sunrise or sunset? I've watched my area of the US gain a minute of daylight a day since I got this thing. And for whatever reason, that just tickles my little southern, cold-hating heart.

I also find it useful for keeping up with my meetings and even just knowing what day it is (WFH folks will know what I mean). So it's not all just fun and games.

But Creating Your Own Tidbyt Apps?

My one disappointment with the Tidbyt is around creating your own apps. The company claims you can create apps on Tidbyt if you're just learning to code. So, I figured, "Why not give it a try?" On Mac, you have to first install Homebrew, then install Pixlet, and then use a Python-like language called Starlark. I'm not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination. I can slap down a few terminal commands or write a line or two of HTML if necessary. But that's where my skills end.

I got the programming environment set up, but I never even managed to get the Hello World program that's already coded, so you only need to copy and paste it. And there are a few pre-existing apps that require an API key that I'm lost about. It would be nice if this aspect of the display was a little more "average user friendly" instead of being so programmer-focused.

Still, that won't keep me from using Tidbyt. I found it a useful way to track little bits of info without needing my phone, and there's an app store full of apps someone else has created that give me most of the information I want. And, who knows? In the future it might be even easier to create your own.