MacRumors has picked this up:
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The sad truth is that it’s long past time to sherlock the functionality of apps like Bartender, especially since Apple added the notch and limited menu bar space even more.
Reverted to the previous version via Time Machine until we have some more details.
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I think there is value in that functionality (hiding menu bar items), but Bartender is way too expensive for any value it provides. Apps provide that features for free, without screen recording permission. Plus apps like BetterTouchTool are swiss army knife providing similar feature as part of 100s of other features for a lifetime license lol. What are these devs thinking moving to a subscription model or even charging for every new upgrade. 
For example, I use this app Quitter, which quits application after X amount of time. It’s a perfect app and it’s been free for years. Imagine if the dev starts charging for such a small feature? Lol. People do it out of passion which is great, I would pay a one-time fee or donate, but never a subscription or upgrade model for niche apps.
Especially in the world of ChatGPT where anyone can write a quick script to make small/niche features for themselves.
PS: Not saying Bartender is a bad app, but as a consumer, I have so many other options so why pay. The business model isn’t great for such niche utility apps.
My point was that the functionality of those utilities should be built into macOS, given the prevalence of menubar icons and apps (which Apple has encouraged) and the limited space available for them, especially with the notch.
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From another reddit comment (posting because I feel it’s relevant):
I compared my old/original 5.0.52 binary against one I downloaded today… there are a significant amount of changes. This is not simply a re-pack of 5.0.52 with a new developer certificate.
Original 5.0.52 binary size: 8759120 bytes
New 5.0.52 binary size: 10105248 bytes
At minimum it appears a new analytics framework from Amplitude (https://amplitude.com/) was included but there could be other changes.
The list of shared libraries used by the app also changed to include Network.framework, libsqlite3 and libswiftWebKit. I suspect these are all required by the Amplitude framework.
tl;dr - the “new” 5.0.52 binary at minimum includes a new framework to report a ton of analytics data… something the new developer also failed to mention.
And yes, Little Snitch confirms that it does make calls and transfer data to Amplitude.
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5.0.48 seems to be the last ‘safe’ one, as that one is apparently still included in SetApp.
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Jason Snell referred to that MacRumors article as well:
As always it depends on the cost and what is delivered. £5-£10 a year for a great utility i’d ‘use’ daily yep, £30 a year for Bartender, nope, £100 for a calendar app (with other features I don’t use), nope,
Each person’s value judgement is different
Amplitude itself is not a shady company but it’s in the business of first party data collection which is obviously very important in these cookieless days. While the tool itself may be legitimate, we do not know what this data is being collected for and thus the movement itself is suspicious on the part of the new devs.
While I understand that indie devs have their own dynamics and this is not new, communication from both parts has been absolutely dismal and thus I have lost trust in Bartender. Uninstalled.
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I was not aware BTT can replace Bartender, will need to dig into this.
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Options in BetterTouchTool https://ibb.co/sJyWcnj. I have Double Click Menu bar as trigger to expand the hidden items. You can also have cursor move in/out as well along with a few others.
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Apparently, as per this tweet, the new owners of Bartender are Applause.
From their FAQ page, this is telling:
We certainly continue to invest in new features and improving the user experience, but our belief is that users don’t want (or need) big overhauls on the products that they already love. A guitar tuner doesn’t need a massive rebuild every six months!
Basically, reading between the lines, they stop development, as the previous question in the FAQ also explains that they do not retain the team. They cannot possibly have developers available to address and develop every single niche app they buy.
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Is there any alternative product that supports presets?
I guess we can block little snitch connections with little snitch lol. I keep it blocked and it asks me for network connection even for updates. Now I don’t know if they have a backdoor to transmit data, i would have to look that at network connections at router level for that.
Any good recommendations for a replacement? Looked at Hidden Bar but it hasn’t been updated for 3 years and lots of reports of issues with Sonoma reported. I am not comfortable getting anything from Git & just want a simple tool to hide some of the menu bar - i.e. I don’t need BTT etc.
Perhaps Vanilla. I haven’t used it yet, but I’m going to try it now, as it has also been recommended.
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Ugh, this is so annoying, I only upgraded to Bartender 5 a few weeks ago. I’d not been running Bartender 4 for a while and then I started to miss it, so I came back. On the upside I paid for the upgrade with PayPal so I’ve opened a dispute to get a refund.
I am a bit lost now as to what to use instead, I need someone to write a review and comparison of the alternatives!
The last couple of weeks I have been using the free and open source alternative Ice (which has already been mentioned a few times in this thread) and it works great so far (with a smaller feature set).
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