Bartender is an app to manage the Mac’s menu bar. The price is a hefty $15 and I’ve often thought who would waste $15 to rearrange and hide menu bar items. Then one day I was working on my Mac and I did not see the Calendar Icon on the menu bar. Did it crash? Did it not start up the last time I booted the Mac? When did I last boot my Mac? Is my Mac infected? A thousand and one questions bombarded my head. Finally I figured out the problem. After switching Applications a few times with the Alt-Tab keys I noticed sometimes I could see the Calendar Icon and sometimes I could not. The answer to the enigma – some Applications have many items on the horizontal menu bar and some have very few.
Here’s an example of the menu bar without Bartender:
For a few weeks whenever I needed to access a hidden menu bar Icon I Alt-Tabed until the needed Icon appeared.
Finally, you guessed it, I broke down and bought, installed, and configured the Bartender Application. Now, I don’t notice it much while working on the Mac which is probably the best selling point: I don’t have this aggravating and annoying menu bar issue all the time.
Here’s an example with Bartender:
Here’s an example with Bartender expanded:
While Bartender is definitely not for everyone I’d recommend Bartender if your menu bar Icons have encroached on your Application Menu and you use the menu bar Icons.
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