7 ms·

A curated directory of 700 Mac menu bar apps

178 points by Amorymeltzer 4y ago

Overtonwindow 4y ago
Has not the menu-bar been deprecated?
- ics 4y ago
  Quite the opposite, it's now necessary to hide the notch by underlaying it with a black background.
  - bliteben 4y ago
    and as has been revealed with the phones they will remove the notch as a future feature
  - josephd79 4y ago
    Yep. That’s what i do. Topnotch.app
- CharlesW 4y ago
  It hasn't AFAIK. Most macOS apps are considerate enough to let you choose whether to show an icon in the menu bar, but even so, Bartender (macbartender.com) is a must-have menu bar clutter tamer for me.
programmarchy 4y ago
I'd much prefer apps use Dock menus, like the HIG suggests. [1] There are very few apps that need to be permanently in the menubar. Plus, the Dock offers a much more high fidelity icon to represent your app. Seems like a win-win for users and app developers, but this bad pattern keeps getting copied. [1] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/components/system-experiences/the-menu-bar#menu-bar-extras https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
- vehemenz 4y ago
  I agree that many applications don't need menu bar extras. However, the option is always nice to have. Regardless of the HIG, it might not be good to restrict functionality to Dock given that many people turn it off.
gbil 4y ago
The problem with the menu bar that unless you are using Bartender to minimize the spacing between the icons, it is clattered with only a few apps running, especially if you are "blessed" with the notch. But oh boy, that site is a small treasure :)
- jxdxbx 4y ago
  It is baffling that Bartender has not been Sherlocked. I think Apple’s current theory is that people will suddenly start using the new “control center” and widgets on the Mac for this kind of functionality (they probably won’t).
  - lelandfe 4y ago
    Plus control center is just a dumpster fire for accessibility. Go on, try to navigate any macOS control center widget with your keyboard in any way. Try to switch between widgets. Sigh.
  - scottlamb 4y ago
    Right now the control center for me is just this annoying icon I never look at/touch and can't disable, much like Docker Desktop's. So it just adds to the problem. Now that you mention it, in concept it seems appropriate for widgets I want ready access to but don't need to see all the time. But... * there aren't that many things that fall into that category. I want to see at least my CPU graph, memory usage, network status (bandwidth, default route: wired vs wireless vs missing), datetime without any clicks. * it doesn't seem as customizable as I'd want, e.g. I don't need a "Now Playing" thing that shows Apple Music. I never use Apple Music. * isn't it redundant with the widgets that pop up when I click the date? I think that's the notification center, though I don't know why there are widgets like calendar and news in there. * third-party stuff doesn't seem to use it. I suspect they can't or haven't bothered because of issues similar to those above, but I haven't looked into it.
    - cpmsmith 4y ago
      I believe it's not possible for third-party developers to create their own items in Control Center. The widgets in Notification Center, though, can be third-party. Incidentally the "now playing" section of Control Center does work with apps other than Apple Music, including Spotify and all major web browsers, just like the media keys.
vasco 4y ago
Mine is constantly disabled. Waste of battery life. Way easier to put whatever indicators in the screen where I'm actually looking at.
- tra3 4y ago
  Not sure why the downvotes, same here. I disabled mine in favour of sketchy bar [0]. I hide most things except for bandwidth and clock. Super handy. 0: https://github.com/FelixKratz/SketchyBar https://github.com/FelixKratz/SketchyBar
  - dogismycopilot 4y ago
    Probably because this article is about the menu bar, not the touch bar.
- ladberg 4y ago
  Do you have any sources to show changes in battery life? I'm a bit skeptical based on the complexity of menu bar widgets.
- trymas 4y ago
  Aren't you mixing touch bar with menu bar [0]? [0] touch bar - I think it's a screen in F-row on macbook keyboards, whereas menu bar is a bar at the top of the desktop that shows current application menus on the left and clock, battery, etc. on the right.
thamer 4y ago
To build your own menu bar app, I would recommend trying out xbar[1]. You can write "apps" in any language. The output of your program is used to construct the menu bar app, so if your program outputs this: Hello --- Open HN | href=https://news.ycombinator.com/ Then it will create a menu bar entry titled "Hello" with a single element in its drop-down menu, which will open Hacker News when clicked. You place your program in a specific directory for xbar to run, and it can be configured to run at a given frequency, e.g. once a minute to report the results of an API call or some measurement from your system, etc. Up to you to build the menu bar app you want. [1] https://xbarapp.com/ https://xbarapp.com/
- duskwuff 4y ago
  If you use Hammerspoon, you can build your own menubar icons in Lua using the hs.menubar[1] API. I've built a clipboard history tool using that, for instance. If you don't use Hammerspoon, you should check it out. :) [1]: https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.menubar.html https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.menubar.html
  - tra3 4y ago
    Hammerspoon is awesome. I have an `hs_message` alias that basically calls `hs.alert`. Super handy. The good thing about xbar is that you can quickly write small shells scripts. But I definitely love HS for global shortcuts/automation. One of the more impressive things I've seen is stack line [0] a visualization tool that works with tiling window manager, yabai. [0]: https://github.com/AdamWagner/stackline https://github.com/AdamWagner/stackline
  - jemmyw 4y ago
    Yeah Hammerspoon is great. I've written scripts to rearrange things correctly when I plug/unplug my laptop into external monitors.
    - reddit_clone 4y ago
      If it is not a hassle, could you please share some of these scripts? I always find rearranging apps/windows (I use multiple desktops) after a reboot quit painful.
gnicholas 4y ago
Does anyone have recommendations for a system monitor that works on Apple silicon? I just want to see ethernet activity, RAM usage, and processor usage.
- jreese 4y ago
  iStat Menus is the venerable favorite: https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
  - varenc 4y ago
    Another vote for iStat Menus. It costs money, but it's my favorite and a bit superior to the open source alternatives like Stats, IMHO, which is somewhat influenced by iStat Menus' design. (though I like Stats's graph view more). iStat has a very flexible customization system and pulls in more data then all the alternatives I've found. Stats for example doesn't show you the per-process disk activity like iStat Menus. I split a family license with a friend to save some $$.
- dewey 4y ago
  The most popular one for many years is https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/, have you tried that? It says it's compatible with Apple Silicon.
- 12baad4db82 4y ago
  There is also https://github.com/gao-sun/eul https://github.com/gao-sun/eul
- jibbers 4y ago
  RunCat! https://kyome.io/runcat/index.html?lang=en https://kyome.io/runcat/index.html?lang=en
- andrewmunsell 4y ago
  Stats is open source & free: https://github.com/exelban/stats https://github.com/exelban/stats Works on Apple Silicon with no issues. I used to pay for iStat Menus but Stats is totally fine for my needs, so I do not use iStat Menus anymore.
e40 4y ago
Hug of death. https://web.archive.org/web/20221101192452/https://macmenubar.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221101192452/https://macmenuba...
kossTKR 4y ago
I think my new arm-based Macbook is pretty awesome in all aspects but the notch is almost as stupid as the old touchbar. I'm a bit surprised it hasn't caused more criticism. As a "pro" i don't need a freaking menu bar, i access stuff via hotkeys or look them up. I need that extra space for doing actual pro work, but now i have a big fat line of dead pixels at the top of my screen if i don't wan't permanent menus creating visual noise. If i could somehow use the space for tabs, or for some other actually useful elements..
- lalaithion 4y ago
  It's literally extra screen real estate. The non-notch screen rectangle is the same size as the pre-notch screen.
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    You’re gaining 24 pt real estate (compared to a notchless screen running the latest macOS versions). Those 24 extra points don’t amount to much (maybe one or two lines of text), but the menu bar real estate is less, and your screen has a pointless gimmick forever embedded into it.
  - kossTKR 4y ago
    We want compactness in a laptop, not "bonus" screen space that's only usable for some useless part of the OS when we have to actually carry it around everyday for multiple years and it makes the screen have a huge top border. Also why does it even have to be this wide in the first place?
    - 1123581321 4y ago
      They made the bezels thinner on those. That’s why the notch is there. They basically moved the menu bar into the old bezel area to give you more useful screen space.
    - ladberg 4y ago
      As long as you want a laptop with a camera above the screen, you have the choice of filling extra space around the camera with a screen or a bezel. I'd prefer the screen and in my opinion it's strictly an improvement over a bezel with no downsides. If you don't want a camera above the screen then you can go for something like a 2018 Dell XPS, but I think the consumer market has spoken and voted for cameras above screens.
m000 4y ago
Now we only need a hero who will run all 700 of them at once and post the results!
plussed_reader 4y ago
And yet no Sound Flower; le sigh.
- rcarr 4y ago
  If you’re willing to pay, I believe Loopback and SoundSource by rogue amoeba offer the same functionality
  - plussed_reader 4y ago
    Thank you for the lead.
- footlooseboss 4y ago
  https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole
crystaln 4y ago
Doesn't seem that well curated. The first GMail app App for Gmail is poorly reviewed and the second Aura doesn't seem to exist. The link to another one Mailtab is broken and I can't find it. https://macmenubar.com/email-contacts/ https://macmenubar.com/email-contacts/
tanin 4y ago
Alternatively, you can program Tip (https://github.com/tanin47/tip https://github.com/tanin47/tip, disclaimer: I'm the creator) to popup relevant menu items based on the text you currently select. I've been using this at work hundreds of times every day for years now. I'd love anyone to try it out.
jsejcksn 4y ago
It's nice to see aggregation and curation efforts like this! It would be useful if the site offered a more compact view and an option for more items per page or "infinite scrolling" (the loading of more results after scrolling past a threshold). Within experiences like these where browsing is the primary mechanism of discovery, it's a positive UX feature to decrease the need for repeatedly clicking/tapping/etc. in order to continue to browse.

178 points by Amorymeltzer 4y ago

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Has not the menu-bar been deprecated?

ics 4y ago
Quite the opposite, it's now necessary to hide the notch by underlaying it with a black background.
- bliteben 4y ago
  and as has been revealed with the phones they will remove the notch as a future feature
- josephd79 4y ago
  Yep. That’s what i do. Topnotch.app
CharlesW 4y ago
It hasn't AFAIK. Most macOS apps are considerate enough to let you choose whether to show an icon in the menu bar, but even so, Bartender (macbartender.com) is a must-have menu bar clutter tamer for me.

programmarchy 4y ago

I'd much prefer apps use Dock menus, like the HIG suggests. [1] There are very few apps that need to be permanently in the menubar. Plus, the Dock offers a much more high fidelity icon to represent your app. Seems like a win-win for users and app developers, but this bad pattern keeps getting copied. [1] https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/components/system-experiences/the-menu-bar#menu-bar-extras https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

vehemenz 4y ago
I agree that many applications don't need menu bar extras. However, the option is always nice to have. Regardless of the HIG, it might not be good to restrict functionality to Dock given that many people turn it off.

gbil 4y ago

The problem with the menu bar that unless you are using Bartender to minimize the spacing between the icons, it is clattered with only a few apps running, especially if you are "blessed" with the notch. But oh boy, that site is a small treasure :)

jxdxbx 4y ago
It is baffling that Bartender has not been Sherlocked. I think Apple’s current theory is that people will suddenly start using the new “control center” and widgets on the Mac for this kind of functionality (they probably won’t).
- lelandfe 4y ago
  Plus control center is just a dumpster fire for accessibility. Go on, try to navigate any macOS control center widget with your keyboard in any way. Try to switch between widgets. Sigh.
- scottlamb 4y ago
  Right now the control center for me is just this annoying icon I never look at/touch and can't disable, much like Docker Desktop's. So it just adds to the problem. Now that you mention it, in concept it seems appropriate for widgets I want ready access to but don't need to see all the time. But... * there aren't that many things that fall into that category. I want to see at least my CPU graph, memory usage, network status (bandwidth, default route: wired vs wireless vs missing), datetime without any clicks. * it doesn't seem as customizable as I'd want, e.g. I don't need a "Now Playing" thing that shows Apple Music. I never use Apple Music. * isn't it redundant with the widgets that pop up when I click the date? I think that's the notification center, though I don't know why there are widgets like calendar and news in there. * third-party stuff doesn't seem to use it. I suspect they can't or haven't bothered because of issues similar to those above, but I haven't looked into it.
  - cpmsmith 4y ago
    I believe it's not possible for third-party developers to create their own items in Control Center. The widgets in Notification Center, though, can be third-party. Incidentally the "now playing" section of Control Center does work with apps other than Apple Music, including Spotify and all major web browsers, just like the media keys.

vasco 4y ago

Mine is constantly disabled. Waste of battery life. Way easier to put whatever indicators in the screen where I'm actually looking at.

tra3 4y ago
Not sure why the downvotes, same here. I disabled mine in favour of sketchy bar [0]. I hide most things except for bandwidth and clock. Super handy. 0: https://github.com/FelixKratz/SketchyBar https://github.com/FelixKratz/SketchyBar
- dogismycopilot 4y ago
  Probably because this article is about the menu bar, not the touch bar.
ladberg 4y ago
Do you have any sources to show changes in battery life? I'm a bit skeptical based on the complexity of menu bar widgets.
trymas 4y ago
Aren't you mixing touch bar with menu bar [0]? [0] touch bar - I think it's a screen in F-row on macbook keyboards, whereas menu bar is a bar at the top of the desktop that shows current application menus on the left and clock, battery, etc. on the right.

thamer 4y ago

To build your own menu bar app, I would recommend trying out xbar[1]. You can write "apps" in any language. The output of your program is used to construct the menu bar app, so if your program outputs this: Hello --- Open HN | href=https://news.ycombinator.com/ Then it will create a menu bar entry titled "Hello" with a single element in its drop-down menu, which will open Hacker News when clicked. You place your program in a specific directory for xbar to run, and it can be configured to run at a given frequency, e.g. once a minute to report the results of an API call or some measurement from your system, etc. Up to you to build the menu bar app you want. [1] https://xbarapp.com/ https://xbarapp.com/

duskwuff 4y ago
If you use Hammerspoon, you can build your own menubar icons in Lua using the hs.menubar[1] API. I've built a clipboard history tool using that, for instance. If you don't use Hammerspoon, you should check it out. :) [1]: https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.menubar.html https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.menubar.html
- tra3 4y ago
  Hammerspoon is awesome. I have an `hs_message` alias that basically calls `hs.alert`. Super handy. The good thing about xbar is that you can quickly write small shells scripts. But I definitely love HS for global shortcuts/automation. One of the more impressive things I've seen is stack line [0] a visualization tool that works with tiling window manager, yabai. [0]: https://github.com/AdamWagner/stackline https://github.com/AdamWagner/stackline
- jemmyw 4y ago
  Yeah Hammerspoon is great. I've written scripts to rearrange things correctly when I plug/unplug my laptop into external monitors.
  - reddit_clone 4y ago
    If it is not a hassle, could you please share some of these scripts? I always find rearranging apps/windows (I use multiple desktops) after a reboot quit painful.

gnicholas 4y ago

Does anyone have recommendations for a system monitor that works on Apple silicon? I just want to see ethernet activity, RAM usage, and processor usage.

jreese 4y ago
iStat Menus is the venerable favorite: https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
- varenc 4y ago
  Another vote for iStat Menus. It costs money, but it's my favorite and a bit superior to the open source alternatives like Stats, IMHO, which is somewhat influenced by iStat Menus' design. (though I like Stats's graph view more). iStat has a very flexible customization system and pulls in more data then all the alternatives I've found. Stats for example doesn't show you the per-process disk activity like iStat Menus. I split a family license with a friend to save some $$.
dewey 4y ago
The most popular one for many years is https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/, have you tried that? It says it's compatible with Apple Silicon.
12baad4db82 4y ago
There is also https://github.com/gao-sun/eul https://github.com/gao-sun/eul
jibbers 4y ago
RunCat! https://kyome.io/runcat/index.html?lang=en https://kyome.io/runcat/index.html?lang=en
andrewmunsell 4y ago
Stats is open source & free: https://github.com/exelban/stats https://github.com/exelban/stats Works on Apple Silicon with no issues. I used to pay for iStat Menus but Stats is totally fine for my needs, so I do not use iStat Menus anymore.

e40 4y ago

Hug of death. https://web.archive.org/web/20221101192452/https://macmenubar.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221101192452/https://macmenuba...

kossTKR 4y ago

I think my new arm-based Macbook is pretty awesome in all aspects but the notch is almost as stupid as the old touchbar. I'm a bit surprised it hasn't caused more criticism. As a "pro" i don't need a freaking menu bar, i access stuff via hotkeys or look them up. I need that extra space for doing actual pro work, but now i have a big fat line of dead pixels at the top of my screen if i don't wan't permanent menus creating visual noise. If i could somehow use the space for tabs, or for some other actually useful elements..

lalaithion 4y ago
It's literally extra screen real estate. The non-notch screen rectangle is the same size as the pre-notch screen.
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  You’re gaining 24 pt real estate (compared to a notchless screen running the latest macOS versions). Those 24 extra points don’t amount to much (maybe one or two lines of text), but the menu bar real estate is less, and your screen has a pointless gimmick forever embedded into it.
- kossTKR 4y ago
  We want compactness in a laptop, not "bonus" screen space that's only usable for some useless part of the OS when we have to actually carry it around everyday for multiple years and it makes the screen have a huge top border. Also why does it even have to be this wide in the first place?
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    They made the bezels thinner on those. That’s why the notch is there. They basically moved the menu bar into the old bezel area to give you more useful screen space.
  - ladberg 4y ago
    As long as you want a laptop with a camera above the screen, you have the choice of filling extra space around the camera with a screen or a bezel. I'd prefer the screen and in my opinion it's strictly an improvement over a bezel with no downsides. If you don't want a camera above the screen then you can go for something like a 2018 Dell XPS, but I think the consumer market has spoken and voted for cameras above screens.

m000 4y ago

Now we only need a hero who will run all 700 of them at once and post the results!

plussed_reader 4y ago

And yet no Sound Flower; le sigh.

rcarr 4y ago
If you’re willing to pay, I believe Loopback and SoundSource by rogue amoeba offer the same functionality
- plussed_reader 4y ago
  Thank you for the lead.
footlooseboss 4y ago
https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole

crystaln 4y ago

Doesn't seem that well curated. The first GMail app App for Gmail is poorly reviewed and the second Aura doesn't seem to exist. The link to another one Mailtab is broken and I can't find it. https://macmenubar.com/email-contacts/ https://macmenubar.com/email-contacts/

tanin 4y ago

Alternatively, you can program Tip (https://github.com/tanin47/tip https://github.com/tanin47/tip, disclaimer: I'm the creator) to popup relevant menu items based on the text you currently select. I've been using this at work hundreds of times every day for years now. I'd love anyone to try it out.

jsejcksn 4y ago

It's nice to see aggregation and curation efforts like this! It would be useful if the site offered a more compact view and an option for more items per page or "infinite scrolling" (the loading of more results after scrolling past a threshold). Within experiences like these where browsing is the primary mechanism of discovery, it's a positive UX feature to decrease the need for repeatedly clicking/tapping/etc. in order to continue to browse.