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Tailscale's new macOS home

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Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#241

Post by bongripper »

jwr wrote: post #240
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…

I never understood the logic behind the thinking there. Why would you ever want to place menubar items UNDER the notch, if you know it's there and they won't be visible? It's such an easy problem to fix, with such incredible usability consequences, I just don't get the thinking.

[dead]

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#242

Post by veidr »

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…

It's true this is a mess, but no application should have a menu by icon as its only means of access. It's OK to offer that as an option, but all applications should be capable of presenting a user interface when launched from the Applications directory (or (rarely) ~/Applications, etc).

There's really no exception to this rule. For an (tiny) minority of applications, it makes sense to hide the dock icon, and to typically access the app via hotkey or menu bar widget. But those apps should still have an icon and should still be able to be invoked by opening it using any of the standard ways to do that. That's just how the Mac works.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#243

Post by leptoniscool »

jwr wrote: post #240
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…

I never understood the logic behind the thinking there. Why would you ever want to place menubar items UNDER the notch, if you know it's there and they won't be visible? It's such an easy problem to fix, with such incredible usability consequences, I just don't get the thinking.

"Think Different"

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#244

Post by iamcalledrob »

seabrookmx wrote: post #25

> We’re working on a comparable UI for Windows devices As a Linux user and fan of good GUI apps, it always bums me out I'm stuck with the CLI-only options for apps like Tailscale. Even for a simple tray icon I have to resort to buggy GNOME extensions. I understand the fragmented ecosystem and small user-base on the desktop Linux side make it hard to justify, but I hope that changes one day!

Re: buggy GNOME extensions, it drives me nuts that GNOME has no built in support for menu bar icons/app indicators.

There's a whole class of GUI apps that should run in the background until needed, and GNOME just has no solution here. I really don't get why they removed this functionality.

I don't want a "service" model where you start/stop gui apps via systemd. And I don't want to keep a window around for no good reason.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#245

Post by Etheryte »

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 truth is most apps have no business having a menubar icon, but many of them cannot even be disabled out of the box. There's a number of third-party tools that help with the issue, but really this should be handled at the OS level. I want a permission similar to notifications to control whether an app can litter the menubar or not.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#246

Post by gehsty »

sosborn wrote: post #52
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.

TBF - It still does "just work," The fact that it doesn't completely fit into your (and my) preferences doesn't really change that, and if that's the standard, then everything will fall short of it.

It doesn’t just work though - icons are hidden from users, with no way of users knowing they are hidden.

macOS is still better than windows, but my feeling is it’s more of a glass of cheap warm whiskey in hell than a cool glass of ice water.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#249

Post by Angostura »

bayindirh wrote: post #235
sysworld wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 to…

A couple of my colleagues have so many applications running at the menu bar, so they have to use Bartender to be able to have anything resembling a functional menu bar. I understand power users, but I don't understand these users.

Weird. I think I have about 4.

Someone is confusing the menu bar for the Dock

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#250

Post by manmal »

bredren wrote: post #60
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…

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?

The upcoming MacBook Pro (late this year) is rumored to have a hole-punch camera: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/24/touchscreen-macbook-pro...

It‘s reasonable to assume that menu bar items will be rendered differently as well, to accommodate for Dynamic Island (which changes its width as needed).

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