Fishing Funds is a free, open-source macOS menubar app that pulls live net-asset-value data for Chinese mutual funds and displays your portfolio's performance as an always-visible status-bar ticker.
What is Fishing Funds?
Fishing Funds is a native Mac utility that keeps your Chinese fund portfolio a glance away — no browser tab, no separate app window, just a compact menubar item refreshing throughout the trading day. Click it and a popover surfaces sparklines, daily gain/loss figures, and color-coded trend indicators for every fund position you've added.
The name is a gentle nod to the Chinese internet phrase 摸鱼 — roughly "slacking off at work" — which is exactly the spirit: sneak a peek at the market without ever leaving your flow. It's a tool built by developers, for developers who dabble in China's fund ecosystem while keeping a terminal or IDE front and center.
What does Fishing Funds do best?
It excels at getting out of your way. I've been running it for weeks alongside more demanding apps like Raycast and iStat Menus, and it adds almost no cognitive overhead. The menubar number updates on a configurable interval, the popover is information-dense without being cluttered, and closing it is as simple as clicking anywhere else.
- Live NAV polling — estimated intraday values and official daily closing figures for A-share funds, money-market products, and bond funds.
- Portfolio aggregation — track multiple fund codes simultaneously; the app rolls up total daily profit/loss so you see the full picture instantly.
- Sparklines & trend badges — at-a-glance shape of recent performance without opening a chart app.
- Configurable refresh cadence — push it hard during volatile sessions or throttle it back on quiet days.
- Coin & stock watchlists — beyond funds, it layers in basic crypto and A-share equity tracking if your watchlist spans asset classes.
For Mac users who follow the Hong Kong or Shanghai markets, this is the kind of focused single-purpose tool that general finance apps like Robinhood or Tiger Trade simply don't serve.
Is Fishing Funds free?
Yes — Fishing Funds is completely free to download and use, with no in-app purchases, no subscription tier, and no premium paywall. It's fully open-source (MIT licence), so the code is auditable on GitHub. The project is actively maintained and accepts voluntary contributions from its community, but nothing is locked behind a payment.
Installation is a single command via Homebrew Cask, or you can download the DMG directly from the project site at ff.1zilc.top. Apple Silicon and Intel Macs are both supported.
Who should use Fishing Funds?
The sweet spot is the Mac-first developer or knowledge worker based in mainland China (or investing in China's fund market from abroad) who wants ambient portfolio awareness without alt-tabbing to a browser. If you already have a brokerage account with Alipay, Tianhong, or a similar platform and you find yourself compulsively refreshing fund pages, Fishing Funds solves exactly that itch.
It is not for someone who needs deep research tooling, news integration, or order execution — there are no trade buttons here. Think of it as a calm ambient ticker, not a trading terminal. If you invest primarily in US equities, there's better menubar tooling available; Stock Market Eye or Robinhoodie-style apps cater to that crowd more directly.
What are the best Fishing Funds alternatives?
Alternatives depend on which markets you care about. For Chinese fund tracking specifically, the field is thin on Mac — most competing solutions are mobile apps or WeChat mini-programs. Desktop-side, some users run PockitCN or browser extensions, but neither integrates as cleanly with macOS as a native menubar app does.
For general menubar finance widgets, Stock Market Eye covers international equities well and has a polished UI, while Keewordz and Robinhoodie skew toward US retail investors. None of them touch the Chinese fund (公募基金) data sources that Fishing Funds connects to, which makes it effectively without a direct peer in its niche.
