This is a great app but it highlights just how insane it is to use apple products where you have to pay a subscription fee for the 3rd party software that provides the basic OS functionality. With KDE Plasma I don't feel the need to install any additional plugins - everything is built-in, coherent and configurable to your liking.
Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
201–210 of 327 posts
Re: Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
#202It's expensive for me. Sidebar is half the price (lifetime license): https://sidebarapp.net
Re: Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
#203Would it be possible to potentially expand the size options? Large just isn't large enough for me on my MBP; I'd like it to be nearly 2x the size, or roughly equivalent to the 150% 4k scaling factor I have on Windows. (I like the icon-only mode!) On the default XDR M2 Pro MBP display I'm on, I have it set to the default scaling for reasons, but I'd really like to be able to scale the BoringBar to be... quite a lot la…
Wow okay - I thought the large option was already quite large. Will experiment with an extra large option in some time and push out an update if it appears stable.
Thanks! For context, this is how things look for me:
https://i.imgur.com/V5vXq6t.png
One other feature request: allow users to click and drag pinned (or any) icons on the taskbar. I very much arrange my pinned apps spatially so I know where to look/find/launch them. I know that I can effectively be deliberate in my pinning to try to get them in the right spot, but that's obviously quite limiting.
Just bought a license, though, and really enjoy this! Well done!
Re: Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
#204It's expensive for me. Sidebar is half the price (lifetime license): https://sidebarapp.net
I tried Sidebar, uBar - all of them. All of them have the same set of issues that they don't take care of windows that are being maximized (they end up behind the bar) and they have intermittent issues with waking up from sleep.
boringBar does not suffer from these issues. That's the reason why I built it. It works as expected from day 1.
Re: Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
#205I am running Macs for over 20 years now and I wonder: why do we need Dock at all? I have hidden it over a decade ago and never ever used it. If anything, it gets in the way when I push the cursor to the edge of the screen.
(I exclusively use cmd-tab, which is a Docker feature)
Re: Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
#206I am running Macs for over 20 years now and I wonder: why do we need Dock at all? I have hidden it over a decade ago and never ever used it. If anything, it gets in the way when I push the cursor to the edge of the screen. (I exclusively use cmd-tab, which is a Docker feature )
I think that's fair.
My use case is fairly simple: I usually have multiple VS Code windows open at the same time and I have a habit of moving windows related to a certain task to a specific space. The default Dock mixes every window up and I just want to offload the which-window-is-where tracking to some other app - in this case boringBar.
Re: Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since this is the top comment as of now - hijacking this to introduce a change to pricing: ------ OP here - based on the feedback, I’ve switched boringBar to a perpetual license for personal use: https://boringbar.app It’s now $40 for 2 devices and includes 2 years of updates. After that, you can keep using the version you have, or choose to pay for updates again later. For businesses, I’m keeping the existing annual…
What was your justification for the monthly fee in the first place? There is a model that worked for decades: If you spent a _significant_ amount of work enhancing an existing tool you'd release a new major version. The would be a discount for license holders of the old version. Why reinvent the world over and over again?
Because what you end up with is a long tail of revenue that doesn't justify working on the app.
Re: Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Simple answer right? It makes more money. Not saying that was OPs motivation but that's obviously why the shift happened.
To me it seems like small businesses like this get squeezed by these demands to make everything cheaper while the big corporations ignore it and stick to their pricing. I’m not sure OP should have capitulated. Someone who loves this tool will probably gladly pay more.
I'm pretty sure people who give in to subscriptions are usually forced to use a tool (or adobe) for one reason or another. New tool, that does one small thing, would not force many people to go into that absurd payment model.
Re: Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
#209I am running Macs for over 20 years now and I wonder: why do we need Dock at all? I have hidden it over a decade ago and never ever used it. If anything, it gets in the way when I push the cursor to the edge of the screen. (I exclusively use cmd-tab, which is a Docker feature )
I leave it there because I have a large screen and it looks pretty
Re: Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
#210I like it so far.
Some features I'd like:
- XL bar size - even large feels a bit small on a 6K display
- I have grouped windows off, but it would be nice if there was an option to still sort the chips by app, so all the app's windows are listed adjacent to eachother
- If not using the suggest idea above, it would also be nice to be able to drag and drop chips to sort them in the order I want
- Make the Applications menu open for clicks on the entire bottom left area of the screen so I can slam my cursor in the general direction, where it ends up at the bottom left pixel, and click like I could in Windows to open the Start menu
- Ability to give a desktop a name
- Ability to map a key or sequence (e.g. opt, opt) to open the Applications menu, again like how you could open Windows' Start menu with a key
Bugs:
- Clicking a chip to minimise a window, then clicking it again to restore it sometimes causes the window to change size.
- Quitting boringBar spawned three stacks of these: https://postimg.cc/WhmwHGNz even though it already has permissions granted. Clicking "Allow" just spawns another one so they never go away. boringBar is not running in Activity Monitor. Had no choice but to reboot.