It's that time of the year: all the gifts you bought for family and friends are being delivered, and you need to make sure they all make it to you before the holidays. During this season package tracking is awesome. If you need to sign for something, you could even call it essential: you don't want to miss a delivery and have to wait another day.

So tracking is great, but there are downsides.

via XKCD

Stop hitting refresh constantly: track all your packages with Deliveries for Mac, a $5 app that shows all your packages in one place regardless of who's shipping them. With a Today Widget and Calendar integration, you'll never miss a delivery again.

Tracking Your Packages

The main interface shows you everything you need to know: you'll see your packages at left, with a clearly-defined countdown until delivery. You can click any package to see more information.

Adding a package is easy: all you need to do is paste in the tracking number, and Deliveries will figure out which service it's from and add it.

Deliveries plays nice with a huge number of couriers, with most major delivery and international postal services supported.

You can check the official list of supported services for more information – it's pretty complete. Odds are if something is coming your way, you'll be able to track it. And if you can't it's possible to manually enter the expected delivery date along with a URL, and Deliveries will do its best to keep track of it (though obviously supported services work better).

Once you've added a package, you don't need to keep the app open: you'll see notifications everytime something changes. If that's not enough information, there are other ways to track your packages.

Today Widget

If you use the Notification Center's Today screen to keep informed, you'll be happy to know Deliveries comes with a widget for this area:

You'll see the countdown, the name of the package and a snippet about where your package is now. Click any package to open it in the main Deliveries window.

This might look familar to longtime Mac users, espeically Dashboard fans. In case you haven't noticed, Dashboard widgets are basically irrelevant now.

If you're not sure about buying Deliveries, a good starting point is the free widget which provides a taste of what the full app is all about. If you already have Deliveries, but aren't ready to give up the Dashboard, you're in luck: the app and the widget can sync. Just set up syncing in Deliveries – you'll need a free Junecloud account – and login to sync from the Dashboard widget. I'd recommend using the Today widget instead, but the option is there.

While you're setting up sync, look into the Deliveries for iOS app if you want to see your packages while on-the-go.

Calendar Integration

Not a fan of widgets? You've got another option: your calendar. Delivery days can be added automatically, meaning you'll know which days to expect packages every time you look over your agenda.

You'll find the option to add your deliveries to any of your calendars in the Settings.

In my case, I picked a Google calendar shared with my (non-Mac using) wife. Now she can monitor incoming packages as well without having to set up a thing. If you you use the Today screen on your Mac or iOS device, your package information will now make it into your daily summary too.

Any Alternatives?

Maybe you like the idea, but aren't convinced you should spend $5. Well, there's one other app out there for package tracking: Parcel. A notable difference is that it's free, but there's a caveat: you can only track three packages at a time. You can pay $2 a year to remove this restriction, meaning the "free" option becomes more expensive than Deliveries after three years.

If that doesn't work, you can always check out web apps for tracking packages instead. Some of them are pretty good. Myself, I'm happy to have Deliveries. It's not essential, sure, but if you're spending a lot of time hitting "Refresh" you should check it out and save yourself some time.

What do you use to track incoming deliveries?