Six Bartender Alternatives to Manage Your Mac's Menu Bar

[wanha]

I emailed Applause (the company that bought Bartender) about this yesterday and received a reply, which is below.

Alas, they still won't tell who they are, nor was their email even signed by a first name, although they claim that they don't transmit any screen recording data from Bartender.

Still, it's hard to take someone at their word when you don't know who the "someone" is.

 

[hagar]

No amount of damage control should be acceptable to users if an app like this is installing trackers. This should kill Bartender immediately and forever.

Also, props to MacRumors for alerting users and suggesting alternatives.

Definitely. If it’s true that is.
Bartender is also included in Setapp. I hope they’ll respond quickly as well.

 

[wanha]

Question:

if one uses a firewall program (such as Little Snitch) to block Bartender from sending out any data, would that protect the user adequately from the potential security concern here?

 

[JtheLemur]

if one uses a firewall program (such as Little Snitch) to block Bartender from sending out any data, would that protect the user adequately from the potential security concern here?

I don't see why not. Bartender is blocked from reaching any server via my Little Snitch install. There aren't any subprocesses that it spawns which would need to be blocked separately. That's kinda it, continue using Bartender, just prevent it from phoning home.

 

[Melan]

Switched to Ice yesterday and it does the job perfectly. Great that it's also open source.

RIP Bartender. Been using it since 2015.

Am I missing something or is Ice missing the option to always hide certain menu bar items?

 

[MacAddict1978]

Seems that most of these apps are about hiding menu icons instead of showing the hidden ones? I'm looking for one for my Macbook Pro with the notch that will help me see all of the icons that get hidden behind the notch. Any recommendations for which of these apps would best work for that scenario?

How many icons did you add that they are getting pushed into the black hole?

 

[jgbr]

You can throw some of these developers a donation even if just a few $£ etc going through the right method to get their code. ICE is open source and code open to examination.

I lean towards those you can see their code via Github etc.

 

[kemayo]

Am I missing something or is Ice missing the option to always hide certain menu bar items?

There's an "Always hidden" section that you can drag icons into.

 

[OS X Dude]

Personally love that the first and second options are 'Vanilla' and 'Ice', respectively.

They knew what they were doing.

 

[needsomecoffee]

Just updated BTT to show/hide menu bar items to left of BTT. I have been using Bartender forever, but the way I use it is pretty much the same as how BTT show/hide works (I set the action to run when I double-clicked the Menu Bar). Sorry to see Bartender go, but even without the controversy it is nice to have one less program loading at startup. BTT really is awesome.

 

[Jakimo]

I killed Bartender and went to Ice.. works well, very simple. But I’m missing the ability to add spacing to make sections.

Anyone know of a way to add dead spaces in the menu bar that can be arranged?

 

[alexandr]

I've been using Hidden Bar for a while now. Anyone has better experience with other's? Just the free.99 ones, not paying for this s—t.

 

[Undecided]

I used one of these apps for years, but last year I found the easiest and best solution that is app-less. Usually I want all those menu bar items up all the time… but what I don’t want is the giant spacing and padding between them.
Behold in the terminal:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int x
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int y

Where x and y are spacing and padding. I found 6 and 3 for me the best:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 6
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 3

I found I didn’t really need an app after that. All the stuff I wanted to put up there I could fit, and all the stuff that didn’t make it I explicitly took out with ⌘ + drag.

View attachment 2385674

Here’s a reference to the stack overflow I found this:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...fied-in-macos-big-sur-and-later/465674#465674

What's the difference between spacing and padding?

 

[cocky jeremy]

How come I always find out about the free options AFTER I've bought the paid apps!

This site is great for that:

https://alternativeto.net/software/bartender/

 

[Corefile]

Only use FLOSS software from third parties. You don't know what it's doing otherwise.

 

[JosephAW]

Still using Menu Meters in Sonoma

Releases · yujitach/MenuMeters

my fork of MenuMeters by http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/ - yujitach/MenuMeters

github.com

 

[DailySlow]

It's interesting to see the concerns of privacy and who has access to user data as the owner of this app, while other threads have users largely writing off concerns of who owns social media apps that also have access to information across users' devices. Interesting contrast. Hopefully Bartender shares who the new owner is soon for piece of mind.

Here’s Ben’s explain/disclaim https://www.macbartender.com/Bartender5/blog/

 

[jwdawso]

The Bartender vendetta continues…

 

[ignatius345]

I don't see why not. Bartender is blocked from reaching any server via my Little Snitch install. There aren't any subprocesses that it spawns which would need to be blocked separately. That's kinda it, continue using Bartender, just prevent it from phoning home.

Does Little Snitch generate any kind of report on the app attempting to 'phone home'? Curious to know what it's up to...

 

[ignatius345]

Here’s Ben’s explain/disclaim https://www.macbartender.com/Bartender5/blog/

LOL, all this talk about "taking the app to new heights". Like, calm down guys. It's a utility that hides extra **** in the menu bar.

 

[thewiccaman]

I use Bartender via my Setapp subscription having previously bought a Bartender licence. I wonder whether the new owner's relationship with Setapp will continue.

 

[MikeDr206]

This whole timeline is so bizarre. I ran Ben's acknowledgement/apology/whatever the hell that was through an AI detector, it was totally written by ChatGPT. View attachment 2385669

Because I live in a cave and am unaware of such things, what AI content detector is this?

 

[CarAnalogy]

I used one of these apps for years, but last year I found the easiest and best solution that is app-less. Usually I want all those menu bar items up all the time… but what I don’t want is the giant spacing and padding between them.
Behold in the terminal:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int x
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int y

Where x and y are spacing and padding. I found 6 and 3 for me the best:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 6
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 3

I found I didn’t really need an app after that. All the stuff I wanted to put up there I could fit, and all the stuff that didn’t make it I explicitly took out with ⌘ + drag.

View attachment 2385674

Here’s a reference to the stack overflow I found this:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...fied-in-macos-big-sur-and-later/465674#465674

It really makes one wonder why they so drastically increased the spacing in the first place.

Not only that, they then added a notch to make it even worse.

And after several versions there still is no gui option to fix it.

Or even any acknowledgement whatsoever that it’s a bad design.

But then again bad design has been all over macOS for a while now.

 

[Apathist]

BetterTouchTool also has a feature to hide menubar items and is developed by an awesome person

No kidding?

I had no idea and I've been a paid BTT user forever

Ditto. It was also only recently that I realized it had an enormously useful clipboard utility as well.

It's an amazing app, if in some ways challenging to use to its full potential. (Either I didn't notice it when I first read the article or it was edited in later, but without the benefit of the link to Andreas Hegenberg's tutorial, I can't say it was obvious how to implement the hide/show menubar icons feature.)

 

[seek3r]

LOL, all this talk about "taking the app to new heights". Like, calm down guys. It's a utility that hides extra **** in the menu bar.

But soon you’ll be able to share what you hide with your friends as they pivot to a social media service. It’ll also double as a crypto wallet, and shine your shoes

/s