Six Bartender Alternatives to Manage Your Mac's Menu Bar

[JoelBC]

This week I payed the upgrade fee from Bartender 5 to 6.
It's interesting to note that macOS Tahoe has imposed a great challenge to the developer.
I'm using Bartender 6.1.3 both on macOS Sequoia 15.7.2 and macOS Tahoe 26.1 on two different M2 Pro Mac models and it works far better on macOS Sequoia.
On macOS Tahoe there are many display artifacts and some icons are repositioned without sense.
Also one icon from the visible group appears in the menu bar but not in the setup window within Bartender???
The previous post comments about the 6.2 Test build, but I'll hold until it's released.
As it is now, on macOS Tahoe Bartender 6 is work in progress, the worst working of all my add ons.

Appreciated.

Comments about Tahoe are interesting. Would be nice for teh developers to i) share this information and ii) respond to my e-mails!

Sadly agree that it is a work in progress noting my experience is similar to yours which is why I have given up!

 

[oric1]

Appreciated.

If you could test Barbee's automation features I would be most grateful noting that they did not work for me per my above post.

Not sure what's below is what you need, as I never used the Automation before, nor the Triggers in Bartender.

I tried the following: in the Hidden Items bar, there are 3 icons from ToothFairy (https://c-command.com/toothfairy/). ToothFairy helps controlling Bluetooth devices. One icon is related to a Bluetooth mouse, another one to a Bluetooth pair of speakers, and the last one to Bluetooth headphones. I selected the headphones icon and this is how it looks in Barbee preferences/Automation:

When I turned the headphones on, the icon showed up in the main Menu Bar to the leftmost position. It remained there for about 10 seconds, then disappeared. When I turned the headphones off, the icon showed up again, but this time the designed was hollow instead of white, indicating that the headphones were off. After a while that icon disappeared. The only issue is that as indicated in the Barbee preferences, the purple icon is persistent, although it is dark. It went away after turning the headphones off, but not immediately.

It seems to be working OK, but you'll be the judge. If you want to test Barbee, you can do so for 90 days with TestFlight.

Hope that helps.

 

[yayarod]

I had given up on Bartender, but yesterday I tried Bartender 6.2 Test Build. It is better than the 6.1.x versions, but there a still a couple of icons that cannot be properly handled by the indexing process. After every computer restart, they are moved by bartender where I do not want them. Barbee has no more issues with any items and works propoerly here. I'm wondering if they fixed their Automation feature.

I installed the Bartender 6.2 Test build and also can confirm that it performs better (much better in fact) than the 6.1.3 stable release on macOS Tahoe 26.1.

 

[JoelBC]

Not sure what's below is what you need, as I never used the Automation before, nor the Triggers in Bartender.

I tried the following: in the Hidden Items bar, there are 3 icons from ToothFairy (https://c-command.com/toothfairy/). ToothFairy helps controlling Bluetooth devices. One icon is related to a Bluetooth mouse, another one to a Bluetooth pair of speakers, and the last one to Bluetooth headphones. I selected the headphones icon and this is how it looks in Barbee preferences/Automation:

View attachment 2579335

When I turned the headphones on, the icon showed up in the main Menu Bar to the leftmost position. It remained there for about 10 seconds, then disappeared. When I turned the headphones off, the icon showed up again, but this time the designed was hollow instead of white, indicating that the headphones were off. After a while that icon disappeared. The only issue is that as indicated in the Barbee preferences, the purple icon is persistent, although it is dark. It went away after turning the headphones off, but not immediately.

It seems to be working OK, but you'll be the judge. If you want to test Barbee, you can do so for 90 days with TestFlight.

Hope that helps.

@oric1 , greatly appreciated.


One follow up, how do I go about trying it using TestFlight as my only experience with TestFlight in teh past was having beta software distributed automatically to me via developers?

 

[JoelBC]

I installed the Bartender 6.2 Test build and also can confirm that it performs better (much better in fact) than the 6.1.3 stable release on macOS Tahoe 26.1.

@yayarod , greatly appreciated as well.

Any insights or updates on the functionality of the Triggers?

 

[yayarod]

@yayarod , greatly appreciated as well.

Any insights or updates on the functionality of the Triggers?

@JoelBC , I don't use triggers.
Regarding alternatives, I also tried the macOS Tahoe version of Ice.
Deleted it after 10 minutes. It left a persistent Permission granting window after al Permissions were correctly set, that I couldn't make disappear and also crashed once.

 

[JoelBC]

@JoelBC , I don't use triggers.
Regarding alternatives, I also tried the macOS Tahoe version of Ice.
Deleted it after 10 minutes. It left a persistent Permission granting window after al Permissions were correctly set, that I couldn't make disappear and also crashed once.

Appreciated.

I will try Barbee again, perhaps they got it fixed.

Simply disillusions with Bartender for not responding to a single e-mail in 4 months!

 

[JoelBC]

I tried to install and test Barbee today but was locked out as I previously tested and have no more days left.

I would appreciate if someone could test a simple Barbee Automation for me. One example / possibility being to create an Automation which displays the hidden Focus menu bar icon when the Focus mode is DND.

If it works then the Focus menu bar icon should i) appear ii) not flutter and iii) sipper when the DND Focus mode is cancelled.

Much thanks in advance.