Has anyone found a menubar manager that’s working correctly under macOS 26 Tahoe (public beta)? I was using Barbee, but it’s a mess – even the release they posted that is supposedly Tahoe-compliant. Bartender doesn’t even work with Tahoe, but I don’t want to work with Bartender. It appears that Tahoe tightened up the permissions that menubar apps require, so for now there might be no options in the menubar manager space.
Katie
I posted this a while back. There’s a list of Bartender alternatives, plus tips on how to get by without using a menubar manager. I don’t know if any of these will work in Tahoe.
I have switched to Ice (Ice is donationware; unfortunately, not very many users are willing to donate). I do not run any public betas. There is a beta build for Ice that is dedicated to Tahoe:
But:
This is a beta build that provides limited support for macOS 26 Tahoe Developer Beta 1.
- Apple made significant changes to the menu bar that require new solutions. This release contains some preliminary fixes and workarounds to restore a basic subset of features. Not everything works the way it should.
- This build is intended for users who have already updated to the Developer Beta. It has not been tested on macOS Sequoia or below. There is also no guarantee that these fixes will continue to work in the next macOS beta release.
- As such, it is strongly recommend to wait until the official release of macOS 26 Tahoe later this year.
I think that other similar apps will have the same issues/disclaimers. Given Tahoe’s significant ongoing changes, especially a menu bar app and its developer currently could be experiencing a demanding time. The best option to run a menu bar app reliably right now might be not to run it on an OS that is in beta at all, I guess. 
One thing to consider is not managing your menubar but curating it. Most menu icons are basically shortcuts to help you locate the app without alt-tabbing or opening the app in the finder. They don’t do it because it’s useful, they do it because it’s easy. I use Ice but to be fair most of my hidden icons I don’t use.
Some examples:
YMMV, but my point is that with a powerful launcher (like Raycast, Alfred, or whatever) these activities are faster to do switching to the proper app with the keyboard rather than fumbling with the mouse through the menubar and its hidden layers so from time to time I ruthlessly go into the menubar and try to disable the icons that I do not use.
There are also some native macOS icons there, like the wifi and bluetooth settings which can be useful --but they are readily accessible from Control Center, and there is the input selection tool that I don’t know how it came to that place but I never use it.
For the record, my most useful icons are the Safari Profile Launcher ones and the Fantastical icon that also displays the title of the next incoming event along with a couple of Folder Peek shortcuts.
Thanks for the suggestion of Ice. Ice developer’s warning about the beta is enough to keep me away for now. I had changed to Barbee based on @Ojanostra’s earlier recommendations (the one they mentioned in a reply above). Barbee posted an AppStore version recently that allegedly was Tahoe-compliant, but it isn’t. At this point in the beta process Tahoe is requiring menubar apps to request permission to manage the menubar icon for every single app installed on the Mac – in Barbee this shows up as an extraordinarily complicated and thus useless dialog.
Katie
Incidentally, I’ve noticed that more and more well behaved apps are adding an option to hide the menubar icon (with a second launch of the app bringing up the settings or main screen).
Bettertouchtool is an example. Not sure of others, but it’s very useful.