Since the release of macOS 26 (and before), I’ve been wrestling with menu bar managers. I’ve tried some of the most popular onces, including Bartender and Ice, with varying degrees of success.
As an experiment, I decided to forgo using a menu bar manager and see how I make out. Here’s my current menu bar:
What’s made this possible is the “Allow in the Menu Bar” feature that was introduced in macOS 26. If the app supports it, I disable the menu bar option if it’s taking up space without adding value. For apps that don’t have a setting to disable their menu bar app, I simply toggle them off in System Settings.
This setup has been working really well. I ⌘+drag apps to put them where I want them and haven’t had any issues with menu bar apps moving around on me (as was common with the menu bar apps I tried).
I use Sindre Sorhus’s Spaced app to add vertical bars and spacing to my menu bar. Speaking of Sindre, a shout-out for his excellent menu bar app Supercharge, which contains a treasure trove of useful tools and configurations. It’s available directly from the developer and on Setapp.
I’ll continue to keep an eye on the menu bar managers and will be curious to see how this evolves, especially since the Control Center has been opened up to third-party developers. In the meantime, my current setup is pretty close to menu bar bliss.
I’m curious where others have landed after some lengthy discussions about menu bar managers in other threads.
Same approach here, and very pleased with the results. For me, Barbee and Bartender didn’t seem compatible with Tahoe because they have to go through contortions to keep track of what’s on the bar, and fail repeatedly. But with Tahoe, I don’t need more than what System Settings does.
With all the Tahoe problems, I turned off Bartender and haven’t looked for an alternative.
Haven’t had much trouble not having one, but I have to admit, haven’t done much work on my laptop outside my home (without the Mac Studio monitor plugged in), so maybe not a good test yet?
I do feel relieved of NOT having to futz with Bartender settings - one less “arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” task off my cognitive overload
I disabled Bartender since they said they only had beta for Tahoe and when I tried it was a wreck. No great alternative found so I’m living without it.
Wow how did I miss this! Sorely needed. Thank you for posting!
I’ve got a similar setup, and also use his Menu Bar Spacing app to spread out or cram together menu bar icons, depending on whether my MacBook is plugged into my Studio Display or not. I trigger a shortcut via Supercharge, in the menu, to quickly toggle between docked and undocked modes. The shortcut starts or quits Spaced, and sets the spacing in Menu Bar Spacing. I wish Shortcuts could interact with the system menu bar settings, so, for example, I could keep weather in the menu bar when on an external monitor, but not when undocked. The only drawback is there have been a few times the Menu Bar Spacing app doesn’t work, and won’t change the spacing. I haven’t figured out why that’s the case.
I switched from Bartender to Ice when ownership changed last year. I tried going without a menubar utility, just removing unnecessary menu bar items and using the terminal command to reduce spacing. 787: Revisiting Our Mac Menu Bars - #8 by ehpehp
I prefer having the 3 levels of menu bar that Ice offers - visible, row 2, and hidden.
I have never used a menu bar utility. I guess I just don’t get it.
All the apps I have are in my dock, on the bottom of the screen. I keep them in the same position on both my iMac and my MacBook Air. Apps that are only used on one machine live on only that machine.
I don’t have many items in the menubar and never felt a need to “manage” them.
It’s also great that the Systems Settings feature makes it simple to identify exactly what is in your menu bar. Sometimes an app will include a menu bar item that you can’t remove and doesn’t clearly indicate which app it belongs to.
Occasionally, certain apps appear in the menu bar and prevent users from removing them. For those of us who have specific preferences about menu bar content or organization, this imposed restriction can be frustrating. Prior to Tahoe, this limitation was why I would utilize a menu bar organizer to regain control over which items could occupy the menu bar.
I had removed bartender since before Tahoe because of their system menu bug. I went several months without anything. However, I do want to many items there and it becomes a problem when I am not docked due to the notch.
I installed Bartender again this weekend to test out if they have sorted out the bugs and so far so good. Maybe they have finally solved all the issues.
Yeah, I’m trying out the default as well. And I don’t like it at all.
There are mainly three things I miss from when Bartender worked well (Ice also hasn’t worked well for me on Tahoe — and is missing some of these features anyway.):
I want to have one layout for my notched laptop screen and another for my external monitor (with more stuff visible).
I have plenty of items I don’t want visible all the time, but that I still want access to behind a “folder”. I also really like how Bartender can show things like wi-fi, battery and Time Machine only when it’s relevant (but not all the time).
Some apps are only accessible via the menu bar (looking at you UA Connect!). This means I now have to choose between having it visible all the time or never being able to even get into the GUI of the app… (If I turn it off in system settings, even opening via Spotlight/App icon doesn’t bring the app up.)
So now I’ve had to remove some items I want access to some times (like CleanShot and Karabiner-Elements) and I’ve had to deprioritise one of my favourite little stupid nice-to-haves in FuzzyTime.
Hopefully things will shake out! But currently it’s an annoying downgrade that feels unnecessary…
I don’t get the fury that the team behind Bartender unleashed. I do use one, but downloaded Hidden Bar once bartender went away and haven’t looked back. Never seen this group so spun up about an app…
Here’s a possible explanation about the fury, at least my fury. I used Bartender since nearly its day one.
Prior to Bartender, it was becoming popular to put items in the menu bar. This quickly got overcrowded, especially on small displays. Bartender came along and saved the day, creating lots of Bartender loyalists.
Then two things happened that soured lots of (perhaps most) loyalists. First there was a quiet (secretive) sale of the company. Second was Tahoe which broke Bartender and it took too long to get it running again, including putting out some system crippling betas. Tahoe added menu bar management features that reduced or eliminated the need for a separate menu bar management program.
So the army of rabid loyalists have dispersed and gone home!
