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Menu Bar Recommendations

Marko1965

Marko1965

macrumors member
Original poster
Greetings,

Someone told me to install an Ice application on my MacBook Air macOS 26.1 Tahoe. It's getting really annoying that icons disappear from the menu bar.For example, if I want to access my WireGuard VPN application to see if I'm connected, I have to go into settings, uncheck the VPN, and then enable it to see that application back on my menu bar. Other applications also now I have this stupid icon on my menu bar a keyboard settings that I don't want it just showed up.

Apple Should let the user customize or have and option to have what you want shown on your menu bar and hide what you don't want.Ive checked in settings menu bar and doc and can't get rid of that stupid KB setting that's on my menu bar that I don't want.

I know that there a menu bar customization application ice or bartender 6 is it safe to install any of those application on my MBA ?

Cheers,
Marko~
 
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Marko1965 said:
I know that there a menu bar customization application ice or bartender 6 is it safe to install any of those application on my MBA ?
Click to expand...
I am running Bartender 6. It is working pretty well for me, though I am not using all the fancy features.
You can also try Ice. I was using it during the Tahoe beta stages and with 26.0 until 2 weeks ago, but it was never quite good enough. Many are very happy with Ice.
 
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Ice isn't ready for Tahoe yet, but I've poked around GitHub and it is clearly being worked on. Hopefully there will be a release soon.
(Stuff like this is exactly why I am delaying my upgrade...)

I moved away from Bartender because it would show the blue "screen capture in progress" dot at the top right of the screen whenever I moved an app to full screen (even just to watch a video). What are they doing to cause this? It doesn't happen with Ice. (I don't know if Bartender ever "fixed" that, this was some months ago.)
 
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Marko1965 said:
Someone told me to install an Ice application on my MacBook Air macOS 26.1 Tahoe. It's getting really annoying that icons disappear from the menu bar.For example...
Click to expand...
That's the specific purpose of Ice, to hide and show your menu bar icons. It has settings (right click on menu bar) for how to show the hidden ones (with a button, scroll, or just click on menu bar).
 
Honestly the menubar has become a mess and totally useless ... Like @Marko1965 I cannot use 2/3 of the applications (like Marko VPN but also antivirus, cloud storage etc ...) ... on the contrary there are 5 characters spacing between menu points of Safari ... This is not ok and the little apps (ICE, Hiden bar) bring little help.
 
Ice lacks trigger functionality, which brings hidden icons out to menu bar based on preset conditions - but on Bartender 6 it still does not work properly. If you do not use triggers then there's not that much difference between them...
 
There are things in what macOS is decades behind of Windows - even small ones like the ability to hide selected menubar icons into "overflow" menu without the need of third-party apps relying on screen capturing. Getting weather info to menu bar took ages as well.

Only time will tell when macOS will be able to get "bell icon" to notify when something is waiting in notification center - because now there's no way to know without clicking it open.
 
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ad2san said:
Honestly the menubar has become a mess and totally useless ... Like @Marko1965 I cannot use 2/3 of the applications (like Marko VPN but also antivirus, cloud storage etc ...) ... on the contrary there are 5 characters spacing between menu points of Safari ... This is not ok and the little apps (ICE, Hiden bar) bring little help.
Click to expand...
Notch is no "help" either as it takes away the space where icons would be...
 
Onyx has a setting to reduce the space between menu bar items, which can also help. At least for Sequoia, don't know about the Tahoe version.
 
Yes it does. Tinkertool has this setting as well.

P. S. This setting in Onyx is unusable at this moment - attempt to move the slider prompts immediate logout and setting stays unchanged even after new login. In Tinkertool it works as intended.
 
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