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Tailscale's new macOS home

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Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#201

Post by rgblambda »

wlesieutre wrote: post #77
oaweoifjwpo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a real problem, but when I complain about it I get told to just "hide the icons you don't care about" as if that's a solution. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47346079

Especially bad for people with poor eyesight who have to use the display scaling set toward "Large Text" instead of "Default" or "More Space" Between the larger display scaling, losing space to the notch, and the IT department setting up new computers with 8 little pieces of preinstalled bullshit up there, Apple's perspective on this seems to be "if the Ivanti VPN menu extra disappears I guess you didn't really need…

>the IT department setting up new computers with 8 little pieces of preinstalled bullshit up there

You can usually toggle hide on the pre installed bullshit at least. It would be helpful if there was a notification or prompt to tell you the menu bar was full so you know to do that.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#203

Post by sysworld »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #148
alin23 wrote: post #53

The notch hiding menubar icons is such a stupid problem to have. I waste hours every week trying to help people who send me frustrated emails because they bought one of my apps and they say: "it doesn't launch" or "why doesn't it have any interface??" No amount of FAQ will help these people. And this also results in hasty refund requests and even worse, chargebacks that take 2x the amount the users paid out of my poc…

The reason things are this way is that in Apple’s view, third party devs are effectively misusing menu items. Originally it wasn’t even possible for third parties to add new menu extras using public APIs. That was something reserved for Apple. Third party devs had to use a tool called MenuCracker. When Apple finally added the API used now, the intention for it was for full fat GUI programs to provide ephemeral menu i…

It's also abused by soo many devs, just wanting there app to be seen 24/7 by the users, regardless if there app gains anything from being in the menu bar. That's why many users run out of space. Most people don't look at settings or ways to remove them (if they even give an option), so they quickly fill up the menu bar. Back in the day without a notch, people would have so many that some menu items would disappear too.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#204

Post by Nevermark »

Menu items are so convenient.

Apple should let users double the menu bar height. Put the app menus, user name, current time and search along the bottom. A text only bar would look coherent.

Then put menu bar items on the row above. Default from right, but let users move items to the left.

I use hiding menu bar and dock. Dynamic Wallpaper toggles desktop files/widgets visibility. So my Mac's resting face is, and would remain, completely uncluttered.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#205

Post by TheDong »

corlinp wrote: post #153
richardlblair wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was always my biggest gripe about using a mac, the OS that "just works". I ended up a bunch of commands I had to run and a stack of apps I needed to install for it to feel usable.

When I set up a Mac I have a short list of things that I need to install. When I set up Windows I have a much longer list of things that I need to un-install. I much prefer the former.

And when I setup nixos, I have a single command which installs/configures everything.

Windows isn't the alternative if you're on hacker news, OpenBSD and linux are the alternatives.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#206

Post by swiftcoder »

al_borland wrote: post #127
richardlblair wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was always my biggest gripe about using a mac, the OS that "just works". I ended up a bunch of commands I had to run and a stack of apps I needed to install for it to feel usable.

The users who run into issues with menubar space would probably be well served to question if they really need all that stuff. The people with the most stuff up there tend to be the same ones who are always complaining about system slowness or weird issues... because they have 2 dozen utilities running in the background that they don't consider, which are all looking for CPU time or trying to change the default behav…

> The users who run into issues with menubar space would probably be well served to question if they really need all that stuff

Look, I don't even want half that stuff, but the reality is that a bunch of tools mandate by my employers, and a bunch of utilities that are needed to make modern MacOS work reliably, all live up there.

A couple of VPNs, DropBox, OrbStack/Docker, eqMac to unfuck volume control on external displays, BetterDisplays and BetterSnapTool to unfuck everything else about external displays... I'm already most of the way to the notch on a 14" macbook

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#207

Post by swiftcoder »

HaloZero wrote: post #159
corlinp wrote: post #27

Every time I get a new Mac, I run these commands to reduce the spacing between menu bar icons. Lets you fit at least 2x the number of items in the menu bar. ``` defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 2 defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 2 ```

Hmmm, is this supposed to do something on OSX 26.3? I tried setting it to 10 and it doesn't seem to do anything? Wonder if there's something new for Tahoe.

If you log out/in or reboot it will take effect.

Previously killing SystemUI server was enough to restart the menu bar, but that doesn't seem to do the trick anymore.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#208

Post by Nevermark »

UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #166
lxgr wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, got it, I’m holding it wrong. > My goal is genially not to have anything running in the menubar that isn't out of the box from the OS. My goal is to use the apps I want to use, and if they are exclusively menu bar apps, what can I do about that? > The people with the most stuff up there tend to be the same ones who are always complaining about system slowness The cause for system slowness on my mac are too many b…

[flagged]

Empty advice like "you should want what I want, because here is how it works for me", benefits from pushback.

Another common one: responding to a commenter's device or OS problem by suggesting a platform switch. Despite the massive number of unrelated tradeoffs such a decision would involve.

And of course, the pedantic "well, it always works for me" or "really, that should work", chime-in non-advice to just not have the problem in the first place. It is tautologically effective, but ...

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#209

Post by edelhans »

toraway wrote: post #129
bredren wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an unknown issue at the fruit co. Can anyone speculate on any rational if not good reasons for not solving this problem yet?

Probably the same response I just saw someone reply with in this very thread: "You shouldn't have so many utilities running" It's the go-to Apple user response to anything the OS doesn't support or does poorly: "Why would you want to do that?"

Considering that I need a good dozen utility apps to override absolutely bonkers macOS design descicions there is no way around that.
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