Eggbeater Desk is now a Mac app.

Eggbeater Desk, the scoring-desk app that has been running on iPad, is now a real macOS app. Not Catalyst. Not an iPad app stretched into a window. A Mac app, with a menu bar, keyboard shortcuts and a console you can resize. Same App Store record as the iPad desk, same price: free.

By Eggbeater Water Polo · August 21, 2026 · 5 min read

Look at a scorer’s table at almost any pool. There is usually a laptop on it already. Somebody is running the clock, somebody is keeping the book, and the laptop is sitting there doing neither. That is the whole reason this version exists. If the machine is already on the desk, the desk app should run on it.

A Mac app, not an iPad app in a window

We built it native. It behaves the way Mac software behaves: a real window, real menus, real keyboard control. What it does not have is a fresh set of rules for how a game is scored, because underneath it is the same scoring engine as the iPad desk and the phone app.

That shared engine is the part that matters on game day. A game can start on a phone in the stands and finish on the Mac at the table, and neither one loses track of what the other recorded. Scores reach spectators in about five seconds, the same as they always have.

The keyboard is the new volume button

The iPad desk has a hands-free trick: the volume buttons start and stop the clock, so a scorer holding a whistle, a pen or a wet lineup card can still run the game. On a Mac, the keyboard is the version of that.

• Space — start and stop the clock.
• G — record a goal.
• O — record an opponent goal.
• T — record a turnover.
• Command-Z — undo the last play.

The same actions live in a Game menu in the menu bar, which is where a Mac user looks first. Nothing is only in the menu, and nothing is only on the keyboard.

A shortcut nobody can see does not exist

That is the design rule we held ourselves to, and it is why every shortcut is printed on the button it drives. The goal button wears its G. The clock wears its Space. The volunteer sitting down at the desk for the first time does not need a cheat sheet taped to the table, because the keys are on the screen, on the control they operate. Use the mouse all night if you want. The second or third time you see the letter sitting there, your hand finds the key on its own.

The console is the window

There is no dashboard to navigate, no tabs to hunt through mid-quarter. The window is the console: scoring controls down one side, the shot map in the middle, the play log beside it. All of it visible at once, and all of it resizable, so a 13-inch laptop on a crowded table and a big display in a press box both make sense.

The shot map is marked like a real pool — the 2m, the 5m, the 6m — with six numbered shooting zones. That numbering is there so a coach on the deck can call out a zone and the scorer records it without a conversation. Nobody has to describe where the shot came from. They say the number.

The stats fill themselves in

Here is the payoff for a coach, and it happens whether or not anyone is thinking about stats during the game. Every play is attributed as it happens, to a player, at a moment on the clock. So by the last whistle the analysis is already written. Team Analytics carries:

• Game Value — one number for what a player’s night was worth.
• True plus-minus — the score while that player was actually in the water.
• Impact per twenty minutes — so a bench player’s eight minutes are comparable to a starter’s thirty.
• Minutes played — counted from the lineup against the clock, not estimated.
• A shot chart per shooter — where each of them is scoring from, and where they are not.

No spreadsheet on the drive home. No Sunday night rebuilding the game from a paper sheet and a memory of the third quarter.

Practice first, then a real game

Nobody should learn a scoring app during a game that counts. Practice mode opens the whole console — the clock, the buttons, the shot map, the log — on a game that is never sent anywhere. A first-time volunteer can run a full quarter of a game that does not exist, hit the wrong button, undo it, and find out what the shortcuts feel like. Nothing leaves the Mac.

When it is a real game, the steps are short:

1. Open the Desk on the Mac at the table.
2. Enter the scoring password for that club or tournament event.
3. Press Space when the referee starts the clock.

The scoring password is the gate on real games, and it comes from whoever runs the event. Practice needs nothing at all.

Now on the Mac App Store

Eggbeater Desk for Mac is live on the App Store. It is free, and it lives on the same App Store record as the iPad desk, so a club that already knows the Desk is not learning a second product. The laptop that has been sitting on the scorer’s table all season finally has something to do.