Move Menu Bar items to Control Center?

[PotentPeas]

To note — I haven't upgraded to Tahoe yet. I'm continually evaluating it and will upgrade eventually, but I am not comfortable doing so yet. (It's less the visual mess that is holding me back, though I do have concerns about that. It is more just inconsistent reports around performance and bugs. I rely on my Mac a lot for many different tasks, I care more about stability and consistency than "latest features", and I was burned by going to Sequoia too early. Not doing that again.)

But the main point of this topic is:

One thing that I'm keeping an eye on is the situation around the Menu Bar. I currently use Ice to manage the Menu Bar and hide items that I don't use frequently, putting them into a "click to expand" overflow area. I used to use Bartender for the same purpose. Neither of these apps have been "properly" updated to support Tahoe yet. (Both appear to have a pre-release version available, but I have hesitations over how well both of them are presently being supported, and none of the alternatives really appear to be satisfactory either.)

I am aware that Tahoe has some new Menu Bar management capabilities built-in, but I was under the impression that this just basically allows you to "hide" Menu Bar items, but not stuff them into a still-reachable-but-usually-invisible overflow area, which both Ice and Bartender allow for.

I was reading around and I ran across this article: https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/978...-extremely-easy-to-clean-up-a-messy-menu-bar/
Which includes this comment:

macOS Tahoe also lets menu bar items live in the Control Center, which can be convenient for those “once in a blue moon” times where you need to access a specific menu bar item.

Hold up. What? You can move items from the Menu Bar into Control Center? How come I haven't heard of this? That might be a little different than how Ice and Bartender work, but it seems like a perfectly fine "overflow" solution to me. Maybe I don't need a third-party app.

I can't find many other references to this functionality, so I am checking in with you guys. Is this actually true? Can you do it with "any" Menu Bar item?

I watched a video demo and the guy brought up the screen where you add elements to Control Center, and it has a drag-and-drop interface. He was able to drag items from Control Center to the Menu Bar and rice versa. But, it looked like in that case he was just doing it with a Control Center control (you can stuff those in the Menu Bar too). I'm concerned that you can't do this with "any" Menu Bar item, like the article seems to claim.

I'm thinking about other things, like the Time Machine icon, or the icons for "background apps" that just like to have one living up there (like OneDrive, or Better Display, or Rectangle, or Middle), which I might occasionally need to interact with (which is why I don't want to completely hide them) but I don't need taking up space up there all of the time. What happens if you try to drag something like this into Control Center?

 

[p33t3r]

I played around with it a bit, and it seems that the article is wrong. You can pull stuff from the Control Center system settings pane to the Control Center or to the menu, and even set up a brand new Control Center view, but you can't drag stuff from the menu that doesn't already have that option in the settings pane. I tried with the Time Machine menu item, Dropbox and some others, but with no luck.

However, it seems as though developers can add this functionality, as Fantastical has items in the control center settings pane that can be pulled to Control Center or the menu, so maybe more developers will follow. It would certainly be nice to have this functionality built in to the system, and not have to rely on Ice or Bartender.

 

[gilby101]

I used to use Bartender for the same purpose. Neither of these apps have been "properly" updated to support Tahoe yet.

I run Bartender 6.3.0. Works just fine for me. No sign of being beta-ish, except for the widgets which are clearly labelled as beta. Regular updates. Seems to me as "properly" updated. Now ICE is a different matter...

 

[PotentPeas]

I played around with it a bit, and it seems that the article is wrong.

Thanks for checking and thanks for the feedback. I suspected as much, which is why I asked. A shame... That would be a cool feature.

I run Bartender 6.3.0. Works just fine for me. No sign of being beta-ish, except for the widgets which are clearly labelled as beta. Regular updates. Seems to me as "properly" updated. Now ICE is a different matter...

Thanks for the feedback here too. When I say it is not "properly updated" ... Maybe something just changed, but I swear I looked at the web site yesterday, Bartender 5 was current, and Bartender 6 (with Tahoe support) was sort of hidden away with an alpha/beta label. But when I look at it now, Bartender 6 is definitely listed as current. So either they just flipped it since yesterday (...what timing...), or I was hitting a cached page or something.

[Edit] I think they did just flip it, and they aren't quite done. The "Download" link in the top right of the page still offers a Bartender 5 DMG.

Let me ask this. When I was using Bartender, I was slightly annoyed because whenever I went to full screen in an app, it would pop the blue dot "we're recording your screen" indicator in the top right of the screen. I know that Bartender needs to use that API for what it does, but I never observed this behavior with Ice. So my question is, does Bartender still behave this way? You can easily check just by going to YouTube in Safari and putting a video in full screen. Does it show the blue dot in the upper right when you do this?

Thanks.

 

[fisherking]

i use the free hidden bar

it's basic, but gives me a small icon, that, clicked, shows a bunch of menu bar items i don't need to see all the time...

 

[PotentPeas]

I actually fired up Bartender 6 (on Sequoia) to check on the blue "screen recording" dot. It still appears every time I open up an app in full screen. That could be putting a video in full screen, or it could be firing up a game. I find this to be pretty annoying; you could argue that it is "required" for Bartender to do its thing, but that can't be the case as Ice doesn't have this behavior. (This blue dot does appear when messing with settings in Ice, i.e. when deciding which icons should be hidden or not... but it does not trigger if you just put something in full screen.)

Still not sure what I am going to with this one when it actually comes time to upgrade to Tahoe. I'll check out "Hidden Bar" too, I have never used that one before.