Using the same M.O. as BBedit and Sonoma… Applause will be unable to make the neccessary change in the code in order for Bartender 5 to work with Tahoe. You WILL purchase Bartender 6 if you wish to continue.
In the case of Bartender 6, what’s your guess on the subscription cost?
$1.99/month $15/year is my guess.
Wasn’t Bartender 5 a paid upgrade as well?
macOS 26 lets you thin out what’s shown in your menu bar a lot.
Right now - on the beta - bartender isn’t working for me, and I’m getting on fine without it.
I don’t mind making to upgrade, but it might not be necessary.
They broke bartender, promised SEVEN (7!) times that a bug was fixed and now They want a subscription.
LOL
These guys are comically stupid. I won’t give them 1 penny. Switched to Ice and never looked back.
I’m also not going to update this, not worth the cost.
I wonder if they will respect the ‘lifetime’ purchase. Didn’t think so.
Yes, but I could still use version 4 with Sequoia. I didn’t need the new features of version 5. I stopped using Bartender when Applause bought the app though, I use Ice now.
As far as I can see, I have not yet seen explicit indications on moving to a subscription model.
The Bartender site (purchase page) notes “If you purchased Bartender 5 in 2025 you’ll receive a free upgrade to Bartender 6 (macOS 26 Tahoe)!”
Which still indicates that a licenses will still be available per version.
That Bartender will or not respect the life-time (i.e. Mega supporter) purchase, is mainly an assumption.
(not argueing for or agains Bartender itself, but the thread comes across that moving to a subscription is a given, which might not be the case)
Why is the expectation that a one time purchase made for a particular version should be supported for future versions?
The issue only arises if they don’t support lifetime license.
yes, it’s perfectly normal to purchase an app 10 months ago and now be forced to pay again if you want to use it…
Note that you can continue to use version 5 indefinitely without further payment if you don’t upgrade to Tahoe.
side note: free and open source alternative GitHub - jordanbaird/Ice: Powerful menu bar manager for macOS
I love it and so do people on reddit.
I like it - it’s not quite as nice as Bartender was, but that past tense shows which one I’m now using 
(have been using for the past six months or so)
I need to revisit Ice, but from memory it doesn’t do the same things that Bartender does.
Rephrasing slightly, while Ice may not do everything that Bartender did, it does everything I used Bartender for.
There are some, for me, annoyances. Things do not always return to hidden. And items do not always stay unbidden long enough.
But for the most part, it works for what I need.
OT but what happened with BBEdit?
Another vote for Ice!
They charged a very reasonable fee to upgrade to the latest version.
Nothing to see here, move along.
I use Setapp and Bartender is one of the apps that comes with it
Still not a subscription, upgrade is $12. Upgrade to lifetime (Megasupporter) is $48. New user licenses are $20 and $60 respectively.
https://www.macbartender.com/Bartender6/purchase.html