I've never understood why apps get the final say on what goes in my menubar in macOS. Skype says I need a menubar icon; I say I don't. Why does Skype's opinion trump mine?
Because the Apple software product model isn't built to be customizable by the end user.
I don't understand how you can be surprised at a lack of customization options on an Apple OS. It's literally one of their selling points.
Yes, exactly—Apple decides what's best for me. I know they'll fiddle with my menubar as they please. But it's very much outside their usual mode of operations to let random other apps decide what's best for me.
It would be nice if it were built into the OS, but especially when I had smaller screens on a laptop I found Bartender an invaluable application.
That's what I was thinking. On top of that, if it's only a menubar app, why wouldn't you write it in some platform-agnostic language? I have a similar "toolbar sitter" app I wrote with a couple Rust crates and a free afternoon, and that compiles to Windows/Mac/Linux fine. I guess it's more of a Swift exercise than a full-fledged program.
You're right it was more of a project for me try out some stuff rather than having a plan to release an app for everyone.