Announcement Bell

Announcement Bell is a one-time, panel-driven navbar bell — unread badge, a click-open popover of recent updates, and localStorage-based read tracking — with zero external service…

Beamer, Headway, and similar "what's new" widgets start at $29/month just to show visitors a changelog popover. For a small SaaS or indie product, that's a recurring bill for something that's really just a bell icon and a panel.

Announcement Bell is a one-time, panel-driven navbar bell — unread badge, a click-open popover of recent updates, and localStorage-based read tracking — with zero external service and zero monthly fee.

What you get:

— A compact bell button (default 40px) sized to sit right in your navbar, with a dot or count unread badge in a fixed-height slot — Zero Layout Shift whether it's showing or not

— A click-open popover panel listing your announcements — title, description, date, and an optional tag ("New", "Fix", "Improved") per item, with an optional link

— Read tracking stored only in the visitor's own browser (localStorage) — nothing is ever sent to an external endpoint, no webhook, no analytics call. This is a hard privacy guarantee, not just a missing feature

— Left/right panel placement so it never runs off the edge of your navbar

— A canvas-only "open" preview toggle so you can design around it without clicking

— Light/dark theme, single accent color, cross-fade opacity+scale transitions

Built for SaaS and product marketing sites that want a real changelog bell in the navbar — without signing up for another monthly subscription just to tell visitors what shipped this week.