Bartender change of ownership—potential security issue?

The last ‘safe’ one is 5.0.49 from here (as already linked somewhere above):

https://www.macbartender.com/Bartender5/release_notes/

Just in case the new ‘developers’/owners resign these old versions with the new certificate, add tracking and telemetry to them, or engage in any such shenanigans, you can check the checksum of the app after installing it by using the following command from Terminal:

shasum -a 256 '/Applications/Bartender 5.app/Contents/MacOS/Bartender 5'

SHA checksum should be:

0e8d629edcdbf26c190c978a4e98e47712596e664605d2b9a2c0e5f128bb7120

You can also install What’s Your Sign:

… and then use it to check the app’s developer certificate/signature (it should say ‘Surtees Studios’).

Also:

  • Make sure to disable automatic updates in Bartender.
  • Keep the download somewhere safe in case it gets pulled from the archive.
  • Use LuLu (download it from Objective See, too – it’s free) or Little Snitch (if you have it) to prevent Bartender from making any connections – just in case.
  • Expect things to break with the new release of macOS this autumn and look for an alternative.
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