My issue is that Bartender hasn’t worked reliably on my Macs since the ownership change. I don’t object to paying for software, whether it’s a subscription or one-time purchase, but I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the unreliability of Bartender on my machines. Basically, clicking on some of the menu bar groups will often cause the app to crash or not respond; clicking on the main Bartender menu will frequently cause the app to crash; … lots of crashes and freezes. It looks like Tahoe will allow for more menu bar customization, which might be all I need, but I think I might give Ice a shot in the meantime.
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When Sonoma came out, BBEdit forced a paid upgrade if you wanted to continue using it. While they do offer a free version missing features, paid version 13 would not work, you needed to pay again to move up a version to 14. (If I remember the versions correctly)
Unless you bought Bartender 5 ten months ago… Then you will be paying again, for a maintenance update. (unless you want to stay on Sequoia forever)
Anecdotal, of course, but I’m not having those issues with bartender. I use it every day on 3 Macs and it is as stable as ever.
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That’s good to hear—my issues are anecdotal too, and I’d love for them to disappear! I’m using Bartender 5 on two M4 Macs, both running the same version of Sequoia. It’s somewhat stable on one machine but crashes regularly on the other. Are you using version 5 or 6?
I briefly tried ICE and went back to Bartender , even upgraded 6, since ICE was missing features that I used daily.
I’m using the SetApp Version, which is currently 5.3.7.
Setapp says we can access version 6 by opting in to beta updates, but I’m going to leave it alone since it’s working for me. It will be interesting to see if it stays in SetApp or leaves post Tahoe-adoption.
Thanks for sharing. I’m on 5.4.0 right now. I’m using the version directly from the developer.
For third-party apps too? I can’t seem to get that to work.
I have a mega license so I immediately went to Bartender 6. It’s been buggy but mostly functional. I’m sure it will stabilize after a few point releases.
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Happy to see that macOS Tahoe allows to hide certain apps from appearing on the menu bar, not quite the same as Bartender of course but I will stick to that for now and decide if that is enough to have me stay stock on this one.
Doing the same experiment with Raycast / Spotlight, but I’m not too hopeful about this one!
I really didn’t think the £8 give or take for the upgrade from Bartender 5 to Bartender 6 was that bad! But been looking through this thread at options such as ICE and they have piqued my interest to a certain point! Will have to have a more thorough deep dive for comparisons sake.
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Just don’t spend more than $8 worth of your time comparing if Bartender is already doing what you need it to do. 
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I’ve had enough exposure now to the menu bar control in System Settings that I’m strongly considering not doing the Bartender upgrade and just remove it. IMHO Apple is a fault here for their Liquid Glassification of the Menu bar and the subsequent breakage of Bartender. Bartender 6 beta was a mess with most Tahoe betas probably because Liquid Glass was a moving target.
I found that the final release of Tahoe even had difference in appearance from the Release Candidate I got last week, so it’s still a work in progress. I’m holding off until the .1 releases on all our devices (but the one I run macOS betas on) for more stability.
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I have updated as soon as I had Tahoe installed. It was horrible, basically unusable.
I then tried to use Barbee but it was almost the same, barely usable. Then again tried Ice and this one worked but some icons (apps) did not show up.
After one day I wanted to give Bartender 6 another chance (anyway, I have paid for it) and I must admit that it is much better, even if I have no idea why.
Anyway, here are some problems I am still facing:
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spacing doesn’t work, or at least, it does nothing when I try to change it but, randomly after a reboot (real Mac reboot) the spacing changed.
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No setting from v5 has been imported, all triggers and presets were gone. I can’t run v5 on Tahoe, so I will have to find where they were stored or set them again.
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When I open Bartender settings to change the layout, it refreshes and it takes forever. Sometimes if I quit the preferences and reopen them it works, but most of the times I have to wait for the refresh to complete.
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I have noticed some freezes of my entire Mac UI due to Bartender. Quitting it solves the issue and when I relaunch it, everything works normally
Honestly, I was really upset with Bartender but after trying out Barbee and Ice, I think that while Bt devs surely lack some engagement, surely Apple changes to the manu bar have caused lots of troubles to all menu bar managers apps. Barbee was plenty of bugs and Ice, even the latest build on Github, had some glitches, even though it worked almost properly. But Ice is a much simpler product compared to the other two. Please don’t take “simpler” as an offence it’s not: it’s a free product, well designed (even though inspired by Bartender) and its dev does what he can to manage his personal life, work and hobby (because Ice is a hobby for him). So many thanks to him for his great job, wishing he can find more time to dedicate to Ice which has the potential to be even better than Bartender.
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Barbee there is a testflight that fixes a lot of issues
Yeah, I think this is a tough app category to be too hard on immediately post-Tahoe. This is the biggest change in macOS to the menu bar in a decade plus. I suspect they’ll get it sorted out in the next few weeks OR we’ll decide that this category isn’t necessary with the new OS changes.
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I’m waiting for 26.1 for the Tahoe UI issues (and there are many) to be resolved. In the meanwhile with things changing every week I don’t have much hope for Bartender in the next month or two.
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I’ve been using Bartender 4 all along up to Sequoia with it working fine (without having to do any kind of upgrade). With Tahoe, it no longer works 
Will look at Ice or some other alternative.
I upgraded to Bartender 6 today on Sonoma 15.7. No issues. It still works fine. 