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macOS Bartender Auto-Update Signed by Unknown New Owner

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51–60 of 115 posts

Re: macOS Bartender Auto-Update Signed by Unknown New Owner

#51
post #2

I own this app and haven't update yet, smh. Silly its not just a feature of the OS.

There are so many small apps that really ought to be part of the OS by now. A few that come to mind: Rectangle, or some sort of default way to control application windows with your keyboard. Mos / UnnaturalScrollWheels: if you use a docking station, you may want natural scrolling when using your laptop as a laptop, and normal scrolling when using a mouse. Windows and Linux both have this solved for 15 years now, I am…

Alfred is fantastic since it let me remove all the junk I don't care about in Spotlight. Which makes search ridiculously fast for the only things I ever want to use search for: opening applications and basic OS functions you mentioned like locking, entirely using the keyboard. There's a fantastic Alfred feature of an additional locking shortcut that blacks out the display immediately instead of meandering on the lock screen afterwards.

I have never had any desire on any OS to search the web, or the app store, or even my files for that matter (without doing so deliberately). Having everything mangled together is so distracting to me and only slows me down. Started liking my M1 Macbook Pro so much more after I discovered Alfred while searching for any tricks that would let me pare down Spotlight to essentially nothing.

I debloated my Windows 11 search to do close to the same thing (although not quite as good as Alfred) and remapped search hotkeys to be consistent across both platforms which is just so pleasant as someone who routinely needs to switch between MacOS and Windows.

Re: macOS Bartender Auto-Update Signed by Unknown New Owner

#52
post #2

I own this app and haven't update yet, smh. Silly its not just a feature of the OS.

There are so many small apps that really ought to be part of the OS by now. A few that come to mind: Rectangle, or some sort of default way to control application windows with your keyboard. Mos / UnnaturalScrollWheels: if you use a docking station, you may want natural scrolling when using your laptop as a laptop, and normal scrolling when using a mouse. Windows and Linux both have this solved for 15 years now, I am…

> I want to lock, restart and shut down my computer with my keyboard. There are some shortcuts but honestly I can never remember the key combinations.

If you don’t already know this combo, cmd-? (AKA cmd-shift-/) will drop down the “help” menu in most applications that run in macOS. From there, I use the arrow keys to move to other menus. It’s just one nearly universal hotkey and it works for almost all menu items.

Re: macOS Bartender Auto-Update Signed by Unknown New Owner

#53
post #33

I switched to HiddenBar a few years ago when a Bartender licence ran out. It's open source, it's free, and it hasn't been taken over by a new owner who won't identify themselves. https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden

> .... by a new owner who won't identify themselves Idk, but most of software I use were written by unidentified individuals.

You don't have to live like that.

Re: macOS Bartender Auto-Update Signed by Unknown New Owner

#55

I switched to HiddenBar a few years ago when a Bartender licence ran out. It's open source, it's free, and it hasn't been taken over by a new owner who won't identify themselves. https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden

Sadly it's as good as not functional (it doesn't even begin to work on my Mac). I used to use https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer and that also started misbehaving (and now the shortcut won't work). I used hidden's fork as well which also doesn't work. Ice doesn't work either. All of these apps are abandoned.

What isn't working for you? I've been using it for years and have no issues on the most recent versions of macOS. I don't use much of the functionality though, really only just use it to hide icons I don't care about.

Re: macOS Bartender Auto-Update Signed by Unknown New Owner

#56
post #20

There’s a setting to kinda get around having to use apps like this if you’re dealing w the notch. I don’t recall the specific command, but there is a way to shrink the icon spacing to allow more visible icons. Edit: see https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/406316/can-the-spa...

This is what I did too. I don't think I need bartender now. A lot of the cruft can be managed by the control center and there are smart options in the control center and menu bar.

These settings looked good to me:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 5

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 8

Re: macOS Bartender Auto-Update Signed by Unknown New Owner

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t seen a single Mac user on screen share that doesn’t have too many icons on their bar for me. I want to see almost none. For all of Apple’s insistence on design and clean, the menu bar and those hideous icons always there was the worst one ever. I’ve been a Bartender user for over 10 years (I believe 12) and I’m now really fucking sad.

> I haven’t seen a single Mac user on screen share that doesn’t have too many icons on their bar for me. This says more about app devs than it does about users.

Not really. Even in the case where every single app has a good reason to have a menu bar icon, but you're still left with the fact that macOS doesn't let you manage them.

Re: macOS Bartender Auto-Update Signed by Unknown New Owner

#58
post #2

I own this app and haven't update yet, smh. Silly its not just a feature of the OS.

There are so many small apps that really ought to be part of the OS by now. A few that come to mind: Rectangle, or some sort of default way to control application windows with your keyboard. Mos / UnnaturalScrollWheels: if you use a docking station, you may want natural scrolling when using your laptop as a laptop, and normal scrolling when using a mouse. Windows and Linux both have this solved for 15 years now, I am…

FYI, you can use the Keyboard preferences page in System Settings to assign things like “lock screen” (I forget exactly what it’s called) to a key (F15 I think I used).

I don’t know if Restart or Shutdown are allowable choices.

Re: macOS Bartender Auto-Update Signed by Unknown New Owner

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rectangle user for years, great app. Today I got frustrated enough to find AltTab ( https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ ), huge improvement to my workflow already. Sometimes when cmd+tab'ing between apps it'll bring the selected window to the foreground, and sometimes it won't. They'll regain focus for typing, but are hidden behind another window for whatever reason. Fully open windows too, not minimized or anything.…

contexts.app for windows style alt-tab behavior

Contexts is a great (proprietary) app but I forgot it even had this functionality! To me, that's the least useful thing it does.

Re: macOS Bartender Auto-Update Signed by Unknown New Owner

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven’t seen a single Mac user on screen share that doesn’t have too many icons on their bar for me. This says more about app devs than it does about users.

Not really. Even in the case where every single app has a good reason to have a menu bar icon, but you're still left with the fact that macOS doesn't let you manage them.

Or maybe they don't all have a good reason but you don't really have a choice about running them (e.g., on your work computer).

If you are visually impaired, you also likely have greatly reduced space for those icons, especially when undocked. (This issue plagues me personally.) In that case, this is not merely a clutter issue: app icons will simply be truncated from the menu bar, and in some cases that may mean that some functionality is just totally inaccessible to you.

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