Popular Mac app 'Bartender' acquired by new unknown developer
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
You can add feature requests there, it should be pretty simple to extend BTT to support the remaining required features.
I have also recently been approached by shady companies trying to buy my app (I'd never do that) - maybe they are currently targeting apps that require special permissions?
Even though the Leap Motion is now unsupported, I still enjoy using BTT daily.
Mind blown.
It’s an incredible tool and among the first things I install on a new Mac.
And thanks for BTT! It's in my "must-have" apps for any Mac along with Karabiner Elements.
And on the new MacBooks with a notch through the center of the menu bar, it always seems like the icons on the right and the menus for the focused app on the left are ever encroaching towards that space.
It's usually OK if you're in an application that only has File, Edit, View, Window, Help, but once you get into real productivity software you're going to have menu items overflowing to the right side of the notch and your important menu extras (like VPNs) become totally inaccessible when you run out of space.
Well clearly that's not working because every app has a tray icon.
It's time to catch up with Windows XP and let users control which ones are important and which ones get hidden. And the hidden ones should still be accessible.
Bartender really nailed all that and it's sad that a 3rd party has to come in and fix this.
I'd love to know the actual end-user click rate for these tray icons. I bet many are near zero.
These types of things tend to not have a dock icon, because they run in the background and don’t have their own windows that you common interact with or need to activate
... or at least allow API access for third-party/OSS apps to do this without needing full screen recording permissions!
Windows management.
File handler.
Menu bar organizers.
The list goes on.
There is no GUI to disable this behavior, you have to drop to a terminal, run a command, and then reboot the machine.
This is the example I now use whenever a Mac user says Linux is a pain to configure.
Also, you don't need to reboot after toggling ApplePressAndHoldEnabled, but you do need to restart apps.
defaults write NSGlobalDomain ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
expand the save dialog by default:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool true
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode2 -bool true
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.15;
spctl --master-disable
https://github.com/linearmouse/linearmouse
I also know of this, but have not tried it: https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll
I know we’re talking about this in the context of much-loved utilities going sideways, but if tweaking system prefs is your thing it gets a strong recommend.
There used to be this brilliant utility with a brilliant name called Asepsis that let you corral the files into a specific folder (like the vim cmd directory for .swp files), so you could have the functionality without the mess, or wipe them out like (or using) a tmp dir.
Unfortunately, when SIP arrived you had to disable it to get the functionality and it died off.
One or two defaults settings would do it, c’mon Apple! There’s a reason for not shitting all over network drives, why not local storage as well?
At my current job, we're issues MacBooks. My biggest pet peeve of macOS is the grouping of windows behind a single icon on the dock bar. I hate that if I have two Chrome windows open, it takes two clicks to go between them.
With the exception of modals, if a program has multiple windows open, when I should see each of them as its own item on the dock bar (or in Windows, the taskbar). I don't think even Windows makes this an option anymore, but I use WindowBlinds on my personal Win10 computer to give me that behavior while also skinning everything to look like Win2K, because I can't stand the flat aesthetic that's popular right now.
It does, they added it back into Windows 11.
I‘d imagine the dock would look quite ridiculous for someone working on multiple docs, or a slate of images in photoshop, etc.
Anyway try this app for a different method for what you want to do (switch to a specific window): https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/
Right-click the Dock icon (keep holding the button), move your mouse up to the window you want in the menu, then let go to activate that window.
I typically just keep part of each of my windows viable, so I can simply click on them, if I'm going back and forth. So it's still just one click. I got out of the habit of maximizing windows a couple decades ago when I first got a Mac and my first widescreen display.
Pointer Acceleration being the biggest one. One inch of mouse movement should always be the same number of pixels of pointer movement, whether I move my mouse at a snail's pace or at mach 2. A fast, but incredibly short movement of the mouse should not produce the same pointer movement as a slow, but very wide movement.
Second was disappearing scrollbars. Those make sense on a mobile device where screen space is a premium, but on a desktop (or even a laptop!), it doesn't make sense.
Nowadays, both of those actually do have options in the System Settings panel, but when I first got introduced to using a Mac in 2014, both of those requires some archaic shell commands that I had to Google to find.
I love pointer acceleration, and won't use an OS that doesn't feature it.
I _like_ being able to perform pixel-precise movement of the cursor on a ~20MP desktop without also having to drag the mouse across the entire desk or modify mouse DPI to get from one corner to the other.
The disappearing scrollbars are awful though. I have a feeling Apple made that a default to get people to stop clicking on them out of habit.
shrug
I can do pixel-precise movement without acceleration, I just have to move the mouse a lot slower.
The problem is that in my experience, people conflate DPI with sensitivity, and so say things like "1000 DPI is sensitive enough for me". But of course, with only 1000 DPI, without acceleration, and with moderate sensitivity, you kind of get aliasing in pointer movements. You'll move the mouse as slow as you can, but the pointer will jump in 2-4 pixel increments.
I have a 16,000 DPI gaming mouse and set the DPI in the driver to that maximum, then lower sensitivity to compensate. The result is that I can get pixel-perfect movement if I want to, though I admit that it requires a much steadier hand than if I were to just enable acceleration.
Your point though does make we wish that DPI, sensitivity, and the acceleration curve were all configurable directly in the pointer settings for Mac and Windows.
(so is the menu bar, but I just don't know of a bartender alternative, you're right that research and testing takes a lot of effort)
None of the OS are power-user capable for most of the "basics"
So instead they should make it easier to achieve this icon management without too invasive permissions
Bartender is just utility app, but has permissions to e.g screen recording, so new version from new developer without prior explanation just seems shady
Trying to pull a move like this and trying to hide it away like a quiet fart? We can smell enshittification from a mile away and we already know it smells like shit in here.
The support article doesn't mention the cert change or the new owners, and instead calls it "a known issue where certain apps, including Bartender, might not receive Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions properly, despite the user granting them in System Settings."
Highly disingenuous. I've uninstalled Bartender.
But after this I'm not trusting it at all.
Similar things seemed to have happened to the ModHeader extension, newer versions now inject ads.
There are a lot of bad actors out there, who end up in your inbox monthly, asking to "acquire" your app for a small sum of money.
I would bet some if not all were looking at it as a juicy attack vector against my users.
I just wish somebody would create an open source alternative to Rouge Amoeba's Loopback!
Rogue Amoeba has been around for over two decades. They are an early macOS X shop and their softwares are best of breed. Their esteemed Audio Hijack recently received an overhaul to its permissions structure. My understanding (gleaned from a podcast?) is Rogue Amoeba worked closely with Apple on this reworking.
It is doubtful Rogue Amoeba would ever silently sell to an unknown developer.
Rogue Amoeba is precisely the kind of software shop worth supporting with your money and time. I say this only as a satisfied user of several of their products.
I have nothing against OSS and do use many OSS products; I also support software shops that produce good software at a good price and have demonstrated loyalty and commitment to their users. Rogue Amoeba is just such a shop.
This was 12 days ago. I wrote support saying:
> I think screen recording is too much of a privacy and security concern.
> Even if you have no bad intentions, if someone compromises your security, they have access to an app that I've allowed screen recording to.
They replied:
> Bartender 5 isn't actually capturing your screen, this message will show anytime Bartender gets an image of your menu bar items, Bartender only ever gets images of menu bar items, the menu bar, and the desktop wallpaper behind the menu bar.
> That said, we are thinking of a way to isolate the parts of the app that need this particular permission so that way it becomes optional.
I never gave the persmissions to Bartender.
But issues with permissions (e.g. the user needing to disable/re-enable some macOS permission after an update, even if the cert doesn't change) are fairly common.
In this case, downright fraudulent.
This ain't Linux, it's honestly surprising Bartender and various window management apps and whatnot can be pulled off on macOS considering the restrictions. It's not surprising they need to do a weird hack like taking advantage of screen recording privileges to make it work.
Do they though? You buy a license for a piece of software, and as far as I understand that doesn't include any fundamental rights involving insight into company policies, direction, business strategy, ...
Regardless, this is of course quite a dubious takeover.
Also, this doesn't seem to be true anymore, the new owners did outline some future plans:
> [...] We've collaborated closely with Ben to understand his vision for Bartender. Our goal is to implement many of the improvements he had planned and address any reported bugs from the past few months to enhance Bartender's performance. [...]
https://old.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1d7zjv8/comment/l7...
Users absolutely have a right to know that the same software they bought is now being packaged by someone else. We're not talking about a different license or version 6 or whatever. Same software, different owner over night.
BTW for people looking, https://www.macbartender.com/Bartender5/release_notes/ still has the old versions up, 5.0.49 is still signed by Surtees Studios Limited
https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer
(For what its worth it looks like it hasn't been update in 3+ years)
(let's hope some other apps pick up these features if Bartender turns out to have gone down a dark path)
Sure, someone could fork the original and make a “good” version again, but if you didn’t notice, it went bad… same problem.
It might be easier with closed source to some extent, but I’m not sure that means open source has solved it.
https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-Discussion/issu...
https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/69
I'm sure author is overwhelmed right now and will eventually add that to readme.
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40579660
Replacing it with another, preferably free and open source. (search going on at this time)
Assuming that Homebrew doesn't get poisoned with a haxored version of Bartender, you can install a non-tainted version of Bartender from Homebrew by installing it from its formula URL.
Homebrew does not make it easy to do this, but it is possible:
brew unlink bartender
brew uninstall bartender
curl -sSLo /tmp/bartender.rb "https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/ac7bd3c11799ce95a7057796e9d01db81796f381/Casks/b/bartender.rb"
brew install /tmp/bartender.rb
rm /tmp/bartender.rb
It's no longer straightforward, see:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/463901/customising...
Which in turn points to:
Making it open source would have interfered with the author’s profit goal. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make profit from your work and protect the source.
Likewise, you’re free to avoid software that isn’t open source. However, it’s useless to make these demands that someone should have open sourced their work when that clearly wasn’t in the best interests of their goals.
Did you already forget about the back door in xz utils?
Ice [0] is pretty cool and actively developped, but items just overflow into the notch when you open it, making them unreachable.
Seem iBar [1] is the only real alternative for mac with notches, but it's closed source.
[0] https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ibar-menubar-icon-control-tool...
This is just a change of ownership, no malware were found
The fact that it was sold, but the selling was not announced, is incredibly shady. Normally, a developer shouts it from the rooftops, so it makes me raise an eyebrow and wonder if a condition of the sale was to not announce the sale.
Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but I think you're being naive.