PostHog active users on your Mac

Notch Metrics2 min read

PostHog answers almost any question you can phrase. That is its strength and the reason opening it costs you ten minutes rather than one.

How do you watch PostHog without opening PostHog?

Notch Metrics puts the headline figures in the MacBook notch. Collapsed, a thin strip. Hover the camera housing and it expands over whatever you were doing. Move away and it folds back.

What PostHog reports

Number What it is
Active users People with at least one event, de-duplicated
New users First seen in the window
Events Everything ingested, autocapture included
Pageviews $pageview events
Sessions Sessions started in the window

The de-duplication that explains the chart

Active users is de-duplicated across the whole window. One person active on three days is one user and three bars, so the bars in the sparkline do not add up to the headline.

That is correct and it surprises people every time. A weekly active user count is not the sum of seven daily ones, and any tool whose bars do add up is reporting daily actives seven times rather than weekly actives once.

Timezones are your project's

PostHog buckets in the timezone configured on the project, not on your Mac. That is deliberate: it means the notch and your PostHog dashboards agree, and two screens in the same company showing different Tuesdays is worse than being an hour out from your laptop clock.

Cloud region matters

PostHog runs US and EU clouds and a key from one returns 401 against the other, which reads like a revoked key. The connector asks which region, and says so when it fails. What the PostHog connector asks for.

A personal API key and a project id. The key is encrypted on the server with a key unique to that connection, so the Mac app never holds it.

Beta, honestly

The PostHog connector is marked beta on its page. It connects and returns figures; the edges are still being worked on.

Alongside everything else

Revenue from Stripe and Polar, traffic from Plausible and Google Analytics, search from Search Console. Every source.

Apple silicon, macOS 14 and later. Seven days with no card, then $9 a month or $49 a year. Download Notch Metrics.

  • posthog
  • analytics
  • mac

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Questions

How do I see PostHog active users on my Mac?
Install Notch Metrics, connect PostHog on the web with a personal API key, a project id and your cloud region, and place the active users widget in the MacBook notch.
Why do PostHog daily bars not add up to the weekly active user figure?
Because active users is de-duplicated across the whole window. One person active on three days is one user and three bars. A weekly active count is not the sum of seven daily ones.
Does Notch Metrics use my PostHog project timezone?
Yes. Buckets follow the timezone configured on the PostHog project rather than your Mac, so the notch and your PostHog dashboards agree about which day a number belongs to.
Does Notch Metrics support PostHog EU cloud?
Yes. The connector asks which region your key belongs to, because a US key against the EU cloud returns 401 and the other way round, which reads like a revoked key rather than a wrong host.
Is the PostHog connector finished?
It is marked beta. It connects and returns active users, new users, events, pageviews and sessions today; the edges are still being worked on.