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Tailscale's new macOS home

tailscale.com

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Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#212

Post by corlinp »

biztos wrote: post #169
corlinp wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iStat menus (or the new open source "Stats") is a brilliant use of the menu bar, but it can take a lot of space! Then couple ordinary services that add menu bar icons that you don't even ask for (DropBox, Docker, Adobe, etc.) and you can overflow onto the notch quite quickly.

I use iStat Menus and I recently got one of those menu-bar expander utilities. It’s so good I forgot its name already! Now I just click on the chevron whenever I need to access Tailscale or Postgres or CloudFlare or Creative Cloud Dropbox or Google Dropbox or …… Really solved the problem for me.

You'll have to get back to us with that name!

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#214

Post by al_borland »

Nevermark wrote: post #208
UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 advice was to question what is truly needed. I may be a bit on the extreme end, as I never stop asking this question and seeing what life is like without various things.

This doesn’t seem like horrible advice to someone who is running into UI breaking problems. This also isn’t a new notch issue. I remember this being a common topic of discussion going back to the 12” MBP 20+ years ago. People with a lot of menubar icons would have them collide with the dropdown menus. I ran into this issue on some apps, even with a 17” display at the time.

I started to treat these limitations as a positive thing. One could call that Stockholm syndrome or worse, but I found having some of these limits changed how I think about problems. I no longer default to solving problems through addition, and instead first look if a problem can be solved through subtraction. This has been one of the most positive mental shifts in my life and has paid dividends in both my personal and professional life.

Of course the obvious answer to solve the problem through addition are the apps that let you place the menubar overflow into an expandable area or dropdown (like HiddenBar); I think they can also be added to Control Center now. However, I figured someone with that many items up there would already know about those utilities and maybe doesn’t want them for some reason. Those utilities also mask the problem for those who haven’t taken the time or energy to look at their setup critically and push back on their own assumptions of what they really need.

One might say that type of user is less likely on HN than in the general public, but I have seen it at all skill levels and backgrounds. For the more technical user, they hear about something, it sounds cool, they install it thinking it might be useful someday. It never actually makes it into their workflow, but during their evaluation they remember that it sounded cool and keep it around to use “someday”. I used to be this person. I had all the popular menubar apps, geek tool displaying stuff on my desktop, PathFinder replaced Finder, I was all-in.

People can and will do what they want. I’m just pushing back on the idea of what they want, the same way you’re pushing back on what I think you mischaracterized as empty advice.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#215

Post by hagendaasalpine »

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 ```

with nix-darwin you can declare that config:

  system.defaults.NSGlobalDomain = {  
    NSStatusItemSpacing = 2;  
    NSStatusItemSelectionPadding = 2;  
  };

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#216

Post by bigfudge »

dpacmittal wrote: post #199
mort96 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such a simple problem to solve too: when there are too many menu bar icons, put them in an overflow menu. A single icon which contains a list of icons. And let me arrange which icons go into the top bar and which go into the overflow menu. Windows solved this many many decades ago with their system tray overflow menu. Browsers solved it too, by letting you put extension icons in an overflow menu. It's not hard.…

An even simpler solution is allow horizontal scrolling in the area.

That would be gross. I wish devs didn’t abuse menu bars (looking at teams, zoom etc)

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#217

Post by 4k93n2 »

jedberg wrote: post #20

This seems like a good place to ask: What is the current state of the art for connecting back to my home network while remote? I want: access to my home server ability to stream US TV when abroad (by exiting from my home network) ability to make it easy for others with non-tech backgrounds to connect with their devices (parents, kids, etc) ability to have remote linux servers connect automatically on boot. This one i…

tailscale has a feature called "funnel" that will let others connect to a service running on your tailnet, even if they dont use tailscale themselves

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#218

Post by hn111 »

dwg wrote: post #172
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 ```

what are the default values, in case someone wants to restore them?

You can use `delete` instead of `write`:

defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#219

Post by bigfudge »

richardlblair wrote: post #147
freedomben wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for years and years when in discussions about Linux vs Mac, Linux was always slammed as having to be customized and "user's should never have to use the terminal" . (I agree with that, but even in 2014 I remember having to run terminal commands to tweak stuff to make it work more like I wanted to)

Ironically I ended up on linux. Windows went to crap, and I figured if I have to run a bunch of scripts to make my OS usable I may as well just use linux. Honestly, I couldn't be happier. I get so much more out of my hardware and I enjoy the experience so much more.

On a laptop? I’m interested but have never found sleep/wake and battery life to ever remotely approach osx and a Mac.
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