I’ve been a paying user since 2015. This makes me sad, as it’s one of my most beloved utilities and this isn’t a good look. I’ll keep running it without updating until it stops working or I find a replacement that I like. Also:
https://sixcolors.com/link/2024/06/bartender-has-a-new-owner/
It’s honestly wild that the core feature of Bartender (hiding icons in the menu bar) isn’t builtin to macOS.
You can use Hidden for this - https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden
It is and it isn’t. Apple isn’t the best at managing development resources, so they seem to get stretched kinda thin when they take on too many projects. I know they have all the money in the world. That doesn’t make them effective at managing many teams on many projects. They’re already falling on their face on some of their software goals, at least from the outside. I’m happy enough for third-party devs to fill in niche features so long as Apple doesn’t block them from doing so.
That was pretty much my experience with most of MacOS - you have to pay for many basic features, and pray that the tools have been updated to work on current OS versions.
If you hold command you can click on an icon and drag it out to remove it or drag it left or right to reorganize the menu bar icons. Baked in, no extra app needed
Removing isn’t the same as hiding.
Doesn’t work for all menu bar icons, and sometimes people just want to hide stuff as with the old classic macOS Control Strip.
That’s a real shame. I’ve been trying to find a replacement for Bartender for ages, but I can’t seem to find anything that matches up. Every alternative I’ve tested just isn’t as good, so I always end up back with Bartender.
How about Ice?
@ASeriesOfPoorChoices @land Just FYI, Ice won’t yet let you change the spacing between icons like Bartender does but if that’s a concern see https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/67
Thanks for sharing! Do you know if it can show/hide icons based on screen size? I used to only hide my icons when I’m not connected to a larger screen with Bartender.
haven’t played with it yet.
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There is Dozer but it is pretty basic.
Dozer hasn’t been updated in the last five years.
Good point, I didn’t notice.
Discovered vanilla yesterday and are quite happy about it https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/
@some_guy A few people in Reddit recommended Ice (https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice). If you are concerned that Ice doesn’t (yet) allow adjusting the space between icons like Bartender does, see https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/67 - there the developer says it’s on the roadmap but in the meantime there are a couple of links that show how to change it from the terminal.
#MacOS #Bartender5Thank you! For me, ice is the perfect replacement for bartender even though it doesn’t have all those features yet
I’m more concerned that it requires Accessibility and Screen Recording privileges to do the same job that Hidden Bar does without any of those.
Not that I don’t trust the author here, since the source code is open after all – I simply do not have the time to audit it myself. And even if I did, I’d have to turn off auto update in order to prevent a similar switcharoo sneaking by without my knowledge.
@MacNCheezus Hidden Bar definitely looks interesting. Unfortunately, as with Ice it also does not include a way to change the spacing between the icons, so you would still have to use the terminal commands to do that, but I do appreciate the fact that it doesn’t require those permissions. I have no idea why a program that only manipulates the visibility of items in the menu bar would need those permissions.
It works for me. I used to be a paying customer of Bartender until I upgraded to Sonoma and was asked to pay yet again.
Hidden Bar may be somewhat minimalistic but it does the part I really need well enough. The extra features were nice but not really necessary.
I’m not shy of command line config, so that’s good to know. I copied both Ice and the other recommendation from SixColors to my RIL apps. I’ll check them out when I start seeing reasons to move off of my present install of Bartender. Until then, it still does everything I want in ways that I like. Thanks for the heads up!
Not sure exactly what the issue is aside from it being sold to a new developer. Is there personal info theft or issues with billing or upgrades?
It’s a common enough pattern where a reputable app is sold to a shady third party company, which then increases prices, and fills the app with ads and/or telemetry. It’s not really publicly known who the company is, and the company has shown no signs of transparency, which is the root of the trust issue.
Macs making people pay for mundane tasks, typical. I recently switched from windows to mac and it’s CRAZY how many things you need to pay for via an app to get done when compared to free or built-in alternatives you get on Windows.
I tried loving iOS too but it’s just too damn funny that same apps are paid on iOS whereas they’re free on Android.
Examples?
BetterTouchTool, TempMonitor, Al Dente, Alfred, Little Snitch, literally 90% of my apps are all paid, it’s genuinely insane. It’s not like they’re bad, or anything, I miss them when I’m not using macOS, but Jesus Christ…
Many of these have good FOSS alternatives. Bettertouchtool does a million things, but check out rectangle, middleclick for some of the features. TempMonitor has several alternatives but if you’re mostly after menu bar widgets, there’s one called “stats”. Al dente is free, though Apple has something like this built in already but it’s heuristic based and less predictable. After building an 80% charge limiter into iOS and iPadOS I bet this will show up in a future macOS version. Lulu is an alternative to little snitch.
Alfred is just slightly better Spotlight or slightly worse Raycast (which you can totally use for free just fine)
Most apps offer basic features for free, but the truly useful features are always behind a paywall with Apple products. This is the case with iOS too and you can’t deny that. Whether it’s games, apps or basic features like dark mode for browsers. Like why do I gotta pay for dark mode in Safari in 2024? Bruh.
And it does the other way too. There are tons of big features missing from Microsoft’s ecosystem that exist in the their competitor’s products.
I work for a tech company that is a Microsoft shop, and all the Silicon Valley hires that are used to macOS and Slack complain every damn day about feature gaps.
This might be due to how easy Apple makes it to implement this sort of thing. Even if the app isn’t on the App Store.
On iOS, apps must be on the App Store, which requires being enrolled in the Apple developer program. I imagine developers then make their apps paid to cover this.
