Ice – open source menu bar manager for macOS | Hacker News Reader

Ice – open source menu bar manager for macOS

github.com

670 pointssaikatsg189 comments

Not the submitter, but I installed this a couple days ago to replace Bartender. For those not following along at home, the Bartender author just sold it to some sketchy app mill. It’s an app that legitimately requires screen recording permissions to work. I trusted the old author’s reputation. I have zero trust in the own owner.

Ice isn’t as good yet. It’s not nearly so configurable. For example, you can either hide all icons or none. You can’t decide to show some of them all the time. That’s a bummer. I’ll still happily accept that trade off to replace Bartender, which I’d previously purchased several versions of. It’s dead to me.

Great job so far, Ice. I hope you keep improving!

It’s missing a lot, especially for a MacBook with a notch. I went with ibar until ice or any other app gets more features that bartender had.

-Difficult to configure unless you don’t have a lot of apps in the top bar. -No way to scroll through the list. -Does not offer a way to show the extra icons in a bar that displays below. -No search functionality. This is something I used frequently. -Folders which were recently added to Bartender was a nice option.

I do hope the developer is planning on adding more features.

You can always show some icons by moving them to the right of the open/close icon

This only works when you don’t have many icons. You can’t see ones that are hidden behind the notch. If you can, I missed this.

Ah yeah that's a good point. Don't know if this covers that use-case yet

From the blog:

I understand that the transition hasn’t been entirely smooth. Recently, there was a change in the signing certificate for the app, and unfortunately, this change wasn’t communicated properly to you, our loyal users.

https://www.macbartender.com/b5blog/A-New-Chapter-for-Barten...

previous discussion on the hidden sales:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40584606

Argh, I didn't realize that the app was sold and I paid for the upgrade recently :( If I had known I wouldn't have. I wonder if this could be a case for a chargeback, since the owner silently sold the app

Why do these apps require screen recording permissions to work? Just curious.

To get information about other apps' icons

If true, that's a wild permissions model

Among many. Apple’s security model has a lot of ups and downs like this. I gather any app that needs access to anything on the screen outside of itself requires “screen recording” permission. I know all of the Remote Desktop apps, as well as color sampling functions in browsers, Adobe’s apps, and all of the designer tools with similar functionality require it.

You wouldn't want your mouse driver, for example, being able to see _every_ piece of software in your menu bar by default without extra permissions?

The case for "I need to see what apps are in the menu bar" is so rare there's no setting for it -> "screen recording" is the closest one.

It isn't a permissions model, it's explicitly a hack.

Dozer [0] doesn't require any special permissions. I guess this is needed by Bartender because it creates a little pop-out menu that shows the icons somewhere else?

[0] https://github.com/aonez/Dozer/releases/tag/v4.2.1-silicon

To run a bunch of "hacks" that make it work better than the alternatives, I guess:

https://www.macbartender.com/Bartender5/PermissionInfo/

Thanks for the heads up. I use bartender, I will replace it with this app.

Thanks for sharing this note, I completely missed this development. Sad to see what has become of this app.

I just bought it a month ago for max support for a ridiculous price like 50eu :(

After many years of updates I've also bought the mega supporter license this year, which I deeply regret - not because of the money lost but because it seems that author has misused our trust.

I didn’t know Bartender was sold. I thought it was fishy to need screen recording permissions but I assumed it was because of “security” features of the new macOS/m series chip/whatever so I just let it go because I trusted the Bartender dev.

Uninstalled. What a shame.

Bartender did need screen recording permissions for certain features to work under the more locked down security model in macOS 11+. That happened well before Bartender was sold.

Ice (and other menu bar managers) require the same permissions - your assumption was correct and Bartender has needed those permissions for a while.

Hidden Bar doesn't, I'm guessing the screen recording permission is needed for showing on hover.

It does need screen recording permissions because trying to do what Bartender does on a closed down system like macOS is inevitably going to require a hack.

The issue is we trusted the dev because we knew who he was and he'd have an angry mob after him if he was caught doing something sketchy. Now that it's sold to an unknown third party, there's no one to hold accountable for this software we're trusting with screen recording permissions on our machines.

The Reddit thread for context [0].

I sent an email to the original author with my feedback. I can understand why, but I got an autoreply that the mailbox was no longer monitored (even though it's still his personal domain). The things that transpired in the transition are all things I would expect an indie dev to not do. Ultimately my message to Ben was that it was unfortunate how everything was handled and that customers weren't notified. I was a paying customer of Bartender. I'll never use the software again, nor will I buy anything from the original author.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1d7zjv8/bartender_...

> For example, you can either hide all icons or none.

I thought so at first too, but it’s just a confusing UI. The documentation says:

> Simply Command + drag your menu bar items to rearrange them.

What isn’t said is that this dragging also allows you to keep some of the items permanently showing. Anything you drag to the right of that double arrow icon will stay there.

Good thing it’s been added to README now, I was similarly stumped two days ago and only found out from the issue tracker: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40580582 The instructions really should be in the app, though.

Indeed, I had to 'call a friend' to figure it out. I knew it was possible, but couldn't figure out how. Loving the minimalism of it now, though.

I swear I tried that. Guess not! In that case, it covers 95% of what I used in Bartender.

It's really weird, non intuitive but once you figure it out, it's great. For example, if you cmd drag something, it puts you back into edit mode. The chevron design system is weird: they need to just mimic the coloring they show in the README.

> I trusted the old author’s reputation. I have zero trust in the own owner.

As of now, I have zero trust in the old author too. The lack of communication is the fault of both parties. Ben Surtees has caused serious damage to their own reputation. Any new software released under that name will have a hard time gaining trust and traction.

Probably one of the terms of sale. But choosing to receive even more money above protecting the privacy of those who previously paid you money and trusted you is pretty dastardly IMO.

I would say that if it was one of the terms of the sale (we don’t know), that’s even worse. If a buyer makes that request, the seller should be even more conscious of “who the heck am I selling to?”

And who are you to slander a named person and publicly question his reputation, for selling his own business that he created to somebody else? Your behaviour is not proportional to what has happened. It is an icon utility.

Which part of the statement is slander?

Saying that somebody has a damaged reputation.

That is called an opinion. It is subjective yet demonstrable by all the people voicing their unhappiness. That’s what a reputation is: the beliefs and opinions generally held about someone.

Why do you not acknowledge any of the points made? Selling a business is a big deal and an announcement should be made. Not doing so is at best short sided and ignorant.

Other people are addressing those points better than I would. I think it is out of proportion to denounce and name the individual developer. Why does everything have to turn into a witch hunt? And why do you have to call me ignorant for not thinking like you?

Would any hacker be proud to explain to their grand parents that they got very upset that their icon hiding app was sold?

Nobody called you ignorant and the only personal attack here was made by you.

I misunderstood your post. But I haven't personally attacked anybody.

Everything turns into a witch hunt because people in groups are stupid and unempathetic, and live in a fantasy world.

Good on you for having a grounded take, and realising how feeble minded it is of people to denounce the developer and label them as untrustworthy.

I can bet on my life that the majority of these loud complainers have probably never built or contributed anything of value to the world, let alone sold something and gone through a software acquisition.

I have basically no faith in people on social media, but please don’t feel like your alone in your thoughts I agree with everything you’ve said here

Furthermore most people probably haven’t built macOS apps and are unfamiliar with the permissions model regarding screen recording - it may be that it is actually required for good functioning to have this permission. I haven’t built macOS apps, but I’ve built plenty of browser extensions and know from experience that permissions are much scarier than what the developer is actually using them for in most cases. Like with most things: people are ignorant. People are arrogant. And people don’t think for themselves. This all gets amplified when they group up.

And you speak from your own experience selling businesses I take it?

Libel is in printed form.

Slander is in oral or spoken form.

Saying harmful things about someone is neither libel nor slander if those statements are factual. It's only libel or slander if the statements that are made are false.

IANAL but... It is my understanding that statements can be considered "per se" libel or slander even if they are expressed as opinion as long as they are made negligently or with malice and they cause reputational harm.

> And who are you

A paying customer of Bartender.

> to slander

It is not slander to say you distrust someone.

> a named person

Ben’s name was already public. Bartender was published under “Surtees Studios”, after all. Ben has also appeared in at least one podcast. Trusting Bartender meant trusting Ben, the developer, the person.

> for selling his own business that he created

That’s not what’s in question. No one is blaming Ben for selling Bartender, the complaint is that it was done in secret. And it would’ve continue to be a secret were it not for a feature in MacUpdater that someone noticed.

> It is an icon utility.

No, it is not. It is an app that requests Screen Recording, Accessibility, and Location permissions to do its job. Thus it is an app which requires a high degree of trust. That the new owners added an analytics framework to, and who knows what else. This case is awfully similar to when a developer sells a browser extension to someone shady because the profit is in the user-base.

> It is not slander to say you distrust someone.

Of course it is slander to say that somebody's reputation is damaged. Especially when it's not a public figure. Just that somebody's name is public, doesn't make them a public figure. And you even continue. Step out of the mob frenzy for a while and try to look at how you are behaving from a higher perspective. Is it right of you to treat a person like that, because he sold his own business? It matters little you once purchased a product from him. Software change owners all the time.

Until there is definite proof of malevolence you should calm down, as should the other hackers. This business has the possibility of becoming a great embarrassment for Hacker News in the future.

> Of course it is slander to say that somebody's reputation is damaged.

Of course it is not. Reputations are, by definition, opinions. And opinions are subjective.

> because he sold his own business?

If you’re not going to engage in good faith and will just keep repeating the exact same argument after its inaccuracy has been pointed out to you, I don’t see the point in continuing the conversation.

Engage with the words, not the strawman in your head.

> you should calm down

I am calm. Again, you’re projecting what you want to see, not the reality.

It doesn't matter that it's your opinion. Naming a person as having a damaged reputation is very serious. That can and will have real life consequences, all for some bickering about a utility tool for MacOS. Be proportional. You wouldn't publicly name some other person as having a damaged reputation in real life, so why do you consider it acceptable to do here?

And you shouldn't give apps permission to record your screen. That's your responsibility.

> And you shouldn't give apps permission to record your screen. That's your responsibility.

Clearly, they already know this. They're exercising this responsibility by ceasing to use an app that they no longer trust with their privacy.

And publicly flaming the original author. Just because more people are upvoting you and the others flaming the author of Bartender person does not make them correct. It is a mob after all, the only reasonable person in this discussion is Carlos. People are incredibly toxic in groups. Stop the groupthink!

Why can’t people be reasonable online

I don't think I was unreasonable, as that was my only comment on this thread, but oh well.

It's libelous to write false statements with the intent to harm the reputation of private person; but _observing_ that their reputation appears damaged? That seems like a stretch. Personally, I don't wish either the original developer or the current developer ill; but given that the software requires screen recording permissions in order to operate, the communication issued by both should be thorough, sensitive to the privacy and security issues involved, and open. None of that is the case here.

You do not seem familiar with US slander laws and precedent.

What does the US and their laws have to do with this?

Slander is a legal term with a specific definition in the US court system. For you to accuse someone in the US of slander against someone else in the US is only logical to interpret as "x person could sue y person for slander". Otherwise why use the legal term?

Everybody you talk to online is not in the United States or from the United States. Maybe in the beginning of the 90s. Open your mind.

Thank you for saying this. The mob is incredibly dangerous, and one of the reasons I have ZERO online presence outside of hackernews. People are dangerous and cultish in groups, especially so online.

People saying the original software author is untrustworthy live in a fucking whimsical fairyland. And probably have never built anything worthy of a sale

...that has screen recording privileges on its users' systems.

It's not shady to sell a business. It's not shady to have screen recording privileges because that's legitimately needed to provide the functionality. It is shady to sell that product to some unknown group without notifying your customers.

I trust(ed) Ben Surtees to run his software on my machine with enhanced privileges. I'm not thrilled that someone else controls it now, and that I'd probably never have known that if I didn't follow tech news closely.

It was an icon utility that can record your screen

Really satisfied with Ice. I've been a long-time Bartender user, but have thought that version 5 is a little slow and buggy. Ice does what I need it to do (hide/show icons) and it does it faster than Bartender. Not as many features, but my own needs are pretty simple.

Thanks for flagging the sale of Bartender. As a long time user I had no idea and am saddened to hear the new. I'll be switching to Ice or another open source tool immediately.

> you can either hide all icons or none. You can’t decide to show some of them all the time.

This is a non-starter. I hope, with a renewed interest fueled by the Bartender sale and HN, the developers implement this as soon as possible.

Looks like I was wrong about that. The README was updated to explain how after I'd started using it.

I use Hidden Bar (https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden) for this. It works well enough despite not being updated in a while, though there is a bit of jank. Just tried out Ice and it seems to be a nice, lower jank replacement!

I use Hidden Bar too, it's done the job for me, but if there's a reason to hop to another I'm all ears.

It's a minor nit, but I like that Ice doesn't force me to have extra icons in the bar. Unless I missed a setting, Hidden Bar required having < and | icons for separators

If it works, then there's no reason to change.

I stopped using Bartender (because of the recent news) and noticed that Hidden Bar was last updated in Jan 2022 and Dozer in 2019. Neither have a way (or plan to have something) to handle the notch.

Ice still lacks some features, but the developer is working on it and eventually it will be able to work around the notch (if you have too many icons, they'll be hidden by the notch... not sure what Apple was thinking). That's why I picked Ice.

Fyi regarding Bartender;

You could just use "Little Snitch", block internet for Bartender, and keep using the latest safe version for a while: v5.0.49.

Restore it from a backup if you can, and disable updates. Also, here’s the “v5.0.49” file hash:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/0ce40bb5d6f0605c91ae2dc6...

Or LuLu if you want a free, open alternative to Little Snitch.

My biggest need for managing the icons in the menu bar is to prevent them from getting lost behind the notch on my 14" MBP. I recently discovered this question on StackExchange on how to change the icon spacing and padding and that has kinda resolved the situation, but it doesn't look visually as good.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/465674

Perhaps the padding and spacing adjustment could also be brought to Ice?

I'm happy to see that alternatives to Bartender exist! I guess this is not the most straightforward thing to do, as there seem to be many apps for this, but most are no longer in development.

As an aside, there are options in macOS to move some icons like bluetooth and wifi to the control center away from the status bar, but for some reason they always seem to come back.

Yep that's what I do as well,animal spacing override.

That's on the roadmap: https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/67

The dev is also working on a second bar (like Bartender has) that should fix the problem for macs with notches: https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/1

For about 4 years now, I've used Dozer [0] to hide and organize menu items. It's been mature and stable the whole time. It had many of the features still on the development roadmap for Ice. You can drag-and-drop icons, hide and reveal with clicks or keyboards, and have two levels of hidability.

[0] https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer

Same here. Only if the original author didn't abandoned the project.

There is an Apple Silicon build under Releases. It's work fine. It doesn't ask for extra permissions.

I was also tilted by the Bartender debacle and removed it. Tried HiddenBar, but then I realized that a lot of apps running in background offer a possibility to hide the tray icon (it is of no use anyway) and after some clean up in the Control Center it is fine as it is. YMMV, of course and it still would be better if Apple sherlocks it. Such small QoL changes should be a no-brainer.

I know this thread is on Ice, but for all the alternatives in the original Reddit post -- see https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1d7zjv8/comment/l7...

You can keep bartender on 5.0.49 as well.

Having learned that Bartender sold out, I uninstalled it and replaced it with.. nothing. It turns out that macOS has introduced minimal adjustability some time in the past without me knowing.

Glad that there are now open source options after Bartender was acquired.

This is awesome for folks who don't use their own custom status bar! Personally, I use SketchyBar and Yabai for window management. SketchyBar is shown almost all the time, but the status bar is set to hide unless I have my cursor at the top of my monitor. I like this because it's a good combo of having my "status bar items" all compacted on the right, with the useful information I want on the status bar at all times...such as battery level, current weather, volume, the date/time, as well as the focused window.

For those who don't want to install a custom status bar, this seems like it would solve similar problems of the status bar getting way too big with all these programs running in the background.

If you just want to make all icons visible then the easiest way is probably to adjust "defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int <value>" and "defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int <value>". Needs restart/logout to apply. Personally I set both to 6. Works well if you have a static number of icons.

Hidden Bar is good enough https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden

I could never get Hidden Bar to work correctly. I think it's because my MacBook has a notch.

iBar (free at the App Store) so far does what I need.

My MacBook Pro also has a notch and it is working fine so the notch isn't the problem

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. I ran Hidden Bar for months and the hidden icons only became visible left of the notch after clicking > maybe twice, briefly, and I could never figure out what I did differently. iBar worked immediately.

Hm, I don't have enough icons for them to be left of the notch so that might be why I haven't noticed any issues ;)

You need https://apps.apple.com/us/app/say-no-to-notch/id1639306886?m...

That's an okay workaround, but you lose part of your screen and create a thick top bezel.

As a laptop user, I want to use all available space, so what I do is to use https://topnotch.app/ (or a dark wallpaper) which makes the background of the bar black and until now I was using Bartender, which would display the hidden icons on a second bar under the original one when we clicked the icon. I barely noticed the notch.

You don’t need an app to not use the extra pixels Apple added on either side of the notch.

If you want the same appearance (and resolution) as a non-notch MacBook Pro, open System Settings, go to the Displays section, click Advanced... and toggle on “Show resolutions as list”, save that change, and then enable “Show all resolutions”.

Now select the resolution option just below your current selection. (The y-dimension will be slightly less, which equals the space added by the pixels around the notch.)

Aw, I thought it was for managing a bar. Supplies, shifts, etc..

Haha I thought the same.

Seems like one of those apps ripe for Sherlocking by Apple. Which would also solve screen recording privacy issues.

Apple's sort of already sherlocked this. The "Control Center" that consolidates a bunch of menu bar widgets into one big iOS-style dropdown full of controls solves the same problem of "I have more crap in my menu bar than I have room for, especially now that my laptop has this stupid notch". Except it's a private interface so absolutely zero of the programs that want to put stuff in your menu bar can offer up buttons in there.

I got a MacBook for a freelance development project (also needed to build an iOS app) and I have to say that the OS itself feels pretty good. Very much a walled garden and normally perhaps outside of my budget (and the button order on the keyboard feels odd), but in general it's pretty smooth so far!

Nice to see various customization options, BetterDisplay was also pretty useful when dealing with an external monitor (sadly I never figured out why there's no proper anti-aliasing on the external monitor).

Apple removed sub-pixel text rendering support in macOS 3-4 years ago.

They wanted to merge their GPU driver stack across iOS and macOS when they moved to Apple Silicon.

This has come with some benefits, like the lightning fast speed that Macs can enable external monitors.

You're saying about what I said when I first got paid to do some mac software :)

I bought a crappy used mac, used it to make the money, then thought it was immoral to not get a new laptop (it wasn't a big project but it paid like 3x the laptop, and i was moonlighting it so it was all bonus money).

15 years later i have more macs than x86 boxes in my home office...

I have to say that personally I like the ThinkPad keyboards a bit more and I still have a sweet spot for various Linux distros, but for what it's worth, my experience with the MacBook has been pretty darn good so far!

For those like myself who used Bartender as a way to get an extra menu bar for their offscreen items on small / notch screens (something Ice doesn't have yet), I'm writing up the alternatives as I try them out: https://procrastopossum.com/bartender-alternatives/

So far I'm just hoping the BetterTouchTool option pans out.

If anyone is looking for alternatives, I've been using Vanilla for a while and have ben happy with it. https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/

Seconded.

Seems to be a nice option, but the way it handles the notch... I think the second bar that Bartender has and Ice will eventually have[0] works better.

For now, I'll support Ice because it's open source. I'll donate more than the $10 Vanilla Pro costs just to have an open source alternative. It's nice to have alternatives though.

[0] https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/1

This observation is tangential at best, so don’t upvote it.

But HN remains simply unparalleled in finding cool software that makes computers more fun day in, day out.

My internal jury is out on whether chatbots ranked through an elaborate mechanism (Instruct) via what amounts to what I wish I had never built on P(click) feed ranking.

But the Rust Terminal Renaissance? Nix? Flox? TailScale? Linear and Graphite and the golang community with things like fzf?

That shit makes my life better and more fun daily. And HN is where to hear about it first short of being really, really good at GitHub.

I know some people like it, but I find the top menu bar on a mac extremely non ergonomic.

The argument goes that it's an easy spot to hit: Just move your mouse to the top.

But they forget that in order to use the menu bar you have to activate the app!

In other OS's, if you want to pick an item from an inactive app, just click - it will activate the app, and pick the item from the menu bar at the same time.

Not so with a mac. If you click on an active area of an inactive window on a mac, the click is eaten, and you have to click a second time to actually do what you are trying to do. Same with the menu bar, first you have to activate the app, then you can click a second time on the menu bar.

I do not like it.

100% agree. Not having those menu buttons visible until you focus means an extra click (and you can't even see what the menu headings are for that app until you click, so it also delays your thought process).

Ok so you get more screen space I guess, but IMO it's not worth the trade off.

having one menu bar at the top of the screen made sense when macs had nine-inch screens. it saved some screen real estate, which was at a premium at the time. but the bigger the screens get, the less sense this makes.

apple should have switched to menu bars in each app when they introduced mac os x. we were all forced to make so many changes at the time, one more wouldn’t have been a big deal.

True. On the other hand I like that the menu is on top on the screen so I can just throw the pointer up (I use a trackball) and it will end up on the menu, no precise targeting required.

People like the menu bar because of the global menu - no more hunting and pecking for a print or save option, with every application using disparate or bespoke UI kits having those aforementioned options be different places both visually, physically and logically.

MacBooks are absurdly overpowered as a layman’s computer, but the global menu means they only need to learn the OS once.

How do you "learn it once" if the dev can put "print" option anywhere using UI kit?

I haven't found any apps on macOS the past 15 years where the "print" option wasn't where it's expected to be, would like an example just for the fun of it.

It doesn't matter, this is not a property of the OS or the menubar location, just an unenforced convention that you can adhere to on Windows as well

Given that the convention seems more often followed on macOS can't it be a property of the environment of macOS developers usually following the conventions better than on Windows?

Even if not an inherent property of the system it's an emergent one, something causes it if it's not restricted by the system itself but is still a property that apps developed for macOS are much more homogeneous in their menus UI implementation than the others.

If you shroud this basic misunderstanding in so much emergent mystery, sure, but otherwise no, and the real reason is simple enough - that's just one of the defaults in some "UI kits", which macOS devs can also use, including "disparate or bespoke" ones, and could've been just as consistent without it being positioned at the single top spot

Can we agree that it could be a 2nd or 3rd order effect of a design choice such as putting the menu system as part of the system's UI nudging developers to follow conventions instead of inventing their own menu UI because it resides inside a window which they can control completely, hence giving the thought of "I can do the menu however I want" a bit more probable?

It's hard to analyse and quantify this ergonomics objectively so I'm just spitballing a potential way that the menus in Mac apps follow much more the convention than Windows apps. I think Apple is also much better at keeping their UIs consistent than what the Windows team is, could also be another nudge to developers to follow them. And no, I'm not saying they're perfect, I hate all their UIs like the App Store, new System Settings (it's frankly stupid, also in responsiveness), Apple Music, etc.

Design choices are nudges, Apple's ecosystem has nudged developers much better into keeping some consistency across the system, it's much more jarring on macOS when an app doesn't follow conventions than on Windows.

Sure we can agree on nudges and indirect effects, it just wasn't the original statement I've argued with

> just an unenforced convention that you can adhere to on Windows as well

And yet on Windows I often have to do a Where’s Waldo for certain options or even submenus. On macOS it has been crystal clear where to find these options for almost 25 years if we count from Mac OS X, and you can trace some the lineage back all the way to Mac OS 1 which was launched 40 years (!) ago.

The thing that has finally started to chip away at this steely adherence to UI conventions is nothing other than poorly made Electron applications, which ironically Linux can actually get nice menu options for via Dbus trickery :)

It matters. The menu location (and the keyboard shortcut) for Print has been in the Apple Human Interface Guidelines since the 1980s, and all Mac apps adhere to this convention.

You might be able find an exception -- there is no approval process for HIG in Mac apps. But you will not find an exception (v1.0.1 or later) in an app that has any meaningful user population, or is of any meaningful quality.

Ignoring HIG without good justification is a strong garbage signal. It was a surefire indicator of a crap Windows port back in the 1990s, but I don't think that's even a thing any more.

Windows also had ancient conventions, so what?

> and all Mac apps adhere to the convention, or are laughed out of existence.

so not all Mac apps adhere

> there is no approval process

indeed

> Ignoring HIG without good justification

Oh, but there is a very easy justification - most of these defaults are poorly (unergonomically) engineered based on design ignorance from the 80s

I have yet to see how the defaults of windows are more ergonomic. I am also not aware that humans have significantly changed as a species since the 80s, so all the the ergonomic considerations are the same.

Besides, it completely misses the point - ergonomics are often about convenience and knowing what to expect. A zoo of frameworks and UI paradigms is a most terrible outcome with any kind of HIG. Microsoft is not able to keep a consistent UI paradigm for their own software - what a shining beacon of chaos they are.

I have yet to see how I stated that Windows defaults are more ergonomic. And your limited awarenes ignores the fact that ergonomic considerations were not properly taken into account in the design in the 80s just like now there are still plenty of ergonomic issues

The Mac app ecosystem considers HIG failures to be serious bugs, and they do not survive. So yes, for all meaningful definitions, "all Mac apps adhere".

You do not appear to know what you're talking about here, and I don't know why you're bothering to argue. Show me an example of an even semi-popular Mac app which uses a different convention for Print, and we might have a conversation.

Your excerpted quotes are misleading, but I'll respond to one point:

> most of these defaults are poorly (unergonomically) engineered based on design ignorance from the 80s

You just invented that problem. Show me a more ergonomic design for Print. A large part of design/usability success is consistency and predictability.

Apple publishes UI guidance in terms of how/where common features are meant to be. If you drift from this, you will likely be told about it. Unlike Windows, where guidance has shifted over time, and even then, many would just ignore UI/UX standards altogether.

Linux, I find to be in the middle.. applications meant for a given DE will usually come together relatively well, others less so.

It also means that app devs can’t just eschew menus altogether in favor of junk drawer hamburger menus, like is so common on Windows/Linux. Even Electron apps that don’t have menubars under Windows/Linux usually do under macOS because it’d be silly to not populate the menubar when it’s always there anyway.

The omnipresence of the menubar also makes it an excellent hook point for UI enhancement utilities (e.g. a keyboard-driven HUD app) and automation, since it provides a universal interface that covers most of an app’s functions, which is truly rare these days.

I see many people mentioning other alternatives to Bartender as well, so I'll point out again that if you already have a subscription to Parallels, their companion toolbox app (a suite of utilities) includes a similar app

I switched to this yesterday and much prefer it already. Bartender 5 was extremely flaky for me, this just does what it's supposed to.

Also xbar: https://github.com/matryer/xbar

This adds more icons, rather than allowing you to manage the existing ones.

I particularly like the explanation on naming it ice:

> Because your menu bar becomes like ice, allowing your menu bar items to slide away

Sounds like GPT to me

It's not a great name, for discoverability reasons, but I assumed the name was playing on the relationship with Bartender.

I had to install one of these tools recently because of the notch on newer macbooks, they hide icons that overflow and you never notice it. For a while I thought my apps were erroring and not opening properly.

You have to manage it yourself with one of these tools otherwise they are lost to the void in my experience.

Interesting! Is there a way to center the content of the bar on the screen? The split is very cumbersome to use on an ultrawide display and I'd be happy if there was a way to put the content on the middle 3rd.

If it did it would have to be only for external displays because the laptops all have a notch there

I still use the old Bartender 4, works perfectly on macOS 14.5 even with a notch

If this tool gets the additional bar feature and some more customisations, it might be a good alternative

I would love to try this but hesitant as I couldn't find a privacy policy.

Can it be added or maybe I just couldn't find this?

It’s open source. A privacy policy implies that the author is willing to make themselves liable to broken promises. Most OSS authors work for free and do not want to put their ass on the line like that.

The license says “you figure it out”:

> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

“Without warranty of any kind” also excludes any warranty wrt your privacy.

It is just me or has this been happening more and more with mac apps. The unarchiver, Transmition, uTorrent..

>more and more

It's been like 18 years since uTorrent... and that was Windows only, unless I'm crazy.

Do you mean Transmission the open source BitTorrent app for macOS? What’s the problem with it?

The official website was compromised and tainted .dmg files were uploaded to the site, using an Apple Developer signature to bypass the OS X gatekeeper feature

The tainted packages installed a ransomware application (a variant of Linux.Encoder.1, but recompiled for Mac, known as KeRanger) that encrypts the user's files and attempts to force users to pay.. The developers were not complicit in the hack that affected their software; but I included it because the point I was trying to make was that hackers are aware and targeting apps popular among developers.

Can this shrink the gap between icons like bartender?

Not currently, but you can do that using a Terminal command. Search all replies here for it

Thanks!

It should be a crime that Apple hasn't seen the popularity of tools like Bartender, which is major privacy violation to begin with, and developed their own feature for this.

I am not the target audience for macOS menu bar managers like Ice. You can drag-reorder icons in pure macOS without any third-party software, and the additional options seem unnecessary.

Why would anyone write comment like this? Like does it add anything to the discussion? Who cares that you dont use menubar apps so you dont need Bartender.

Because some people may just need this so it is good for them to know, in conjunction to this

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/16lpfg5/hidden_prefe...

> to change the spacing in the menubar and I found out it changes two preferences:

```

    defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int X

    defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int Y

```

> which can be reverted with

```

    defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing

    defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding

```

I learnt about these in a similar topic here. I do not need anything more from a bar app really, so I do not need to install an additional app for sth that I can just handle through a couple of preferences changes in the terminal. For people who do need more functionality, they can get one of these tools.

I opened the README and Usage section only showed how to reorder items, nothing else. This app is utterly unnecessary for that purpose. I thought, perhaps other macOS users are unaware of that, and my comment would help.

It shows how to reorder them into groups that are hidden temporarily and/or permanently. Very useful to keep a clutter free and optimised workspace.

That looks very promising. Thanks for doing this.

The Usage section hopefully rather under-sells it:

'Simply Command + drag your menu bar items to rearrange them.'

... err yes, that's how MacOS works without add-ons

Judging by the last thread about Bartender, when people were discussing alternatives, some people did not even know that was how you can rearrange your menu icons. So I can see why it's worth mentioning.

Also worth mentioning that this behaviour is completely undiscoverable, just like most power user interactions on macOS.

Offtopic, but am I the only person surprised how badly Apple stalled when it comes to window management and UX on MacOS?

I feel that today, as a power user/professional, MacOS wouldn't be usable without applications like Bartender, external window manager such as Rectangle/Divvy etc. I feel strong attraction coming from yabai, but disabling SIP is too much for me.

Personally I'm reaching the point where I'd migrate to Linux ONLY for the user experience (I live in Emacs most of the time anyway, and there I could get some minimal WM on top of it, I guess).

I totally agree. But it also seems like a lot of people don't. Frustratingly enough when discussions like that come up a lot of people respond with a "MacOS just works differently, you just need to get used to it" discussion killer.

Yeah, I know some design principles are different. That doesn't always mean they are better or couldn't be better.

In general I feel like UI/UX on MacOS for the most part has stagnated in the past decade or so. Where there has been evolution, it mostly has been things (poorly) ported over from iOS (system preferences for example).

This in contrast to other desktop platforms that have kept evolving and experimenting with other ways of working. Granted, not always improving things but often making things much better. Window management on windows 11 for example is just plain awesome imho. Certainly on wider screens or screens in portrait it is extremely powerful.

Everything I am working on MacOS I feel very limited in that area. Even with tools like Rectangle it still doesn't work as fluid as it does on windows.

> But it also seems like a lot of people don't.

n=1...

I'm one who doesn't care. I didn't like to have a lot of system tray icons when I used Windows, and I don't like having a lot of them in macOS. I turn off the ones I rarely use (when I can).

However, I also feel Apple have reduced the usability of the menu bar icons in recent iterations. Their clickable area/spacing has enlarged, which is counter to having small icons in a focused space. The Clock and Control Centre can't be moved around. I didn't use Control Centre at all until I discovered some setting that can only be toggled. Since I toggled it, I've forgotten what it was and haven't touched Control Centre since. I'd turn it off if I could. Maybe I need Bartender after all.

The menu bar has now to have more icons than in earlier OSX as to run services like dropbox, 1password etc they now need to be in the menu bar whilst previously they were not needed there - now I suspect this might be the app writers fault as well as Apple's but it is an annoyance.

I think this sort of thing is more subjective and dependent on what the user is used to than most are willing to admit. I find the vaunted Aero Snap feature incredibly annoying for example because it’s so “noisy” with its proposed-snap animations and how easily it’s accidentally triggered (especially when multiple displays are involved) — the way the third party app Moom does it with a popover that appears on green traffic light hover or key shortcut is vastly preferable to me.

It’s true that Mac desktop evolution has somewhat stagnated and could use some movement, but that movement shouldn’t necessarily be toward the Win9X desktop paradigm.

Totally in the opposite camp, in the sense I think it’s preferable to customize your experience using 3rd party apps and it should be encouraged model by vendor.

Sadly Apple picked neither option. 3rd party apps cannot meaningfully interact with Spaces for example, even basic things like moving windows between spaces or adjusting the animation speed so it's not nauseating on ultrawides.

Agreed, just yesterday I was researching APIs in this area. Still, it’s a different criticism.

There is a way to switch spaces instantly. If anyone actually cares I’ll dig up my solution.

I care! Does your solution involve disabling SIP?

This utility allows it https://totalspaces.binaryage.com/

You hit a keyboard shortcut, you get to the new space with 0 animation/transition. It can work with SIP on but only on macOS older than 10.14.

They mention here this is due to some changes they make to the Dock https://totalspaces.binaryage.com/sip-details I'm not sure if the only part I care about (instant Spaces switching) would continue to work without that / if you turn SIP back on. I haven't tried.

You can get pretty fast Spaces switching by checking Reduce Motion in Accessibility. Obviously that has applied to other things across the system.

> even basic things like moving windows between spaces

I don't really use spaces but I've got "Displays have seperate spaces" turned on and Rectangle Pro has "Next Display" and "Previous Display" which moves the foreground app to, unsurprisingly, the next and previous display (which seems to be a space).

Are you after something like "move this window to space Y" rather than just "next space"?

I’d have said this was insane back when I was a Linux user but after years in Mac land… in practice, man, it’s so much better.

It still feels wrong, but I can’t argue with the results.

[edit] though, I mean, at a certain level wanting to customize your UI in X/Wayland means changing out large portions of your UI stack entirely. Layering on top isn’t really crazier than that.

This extends across the system - Safari is great for battery life and hit or miss for performance, but it has an infuriating bug where it zooms out every webpage in Split View. There have been so many Stack Exchange and forum posts since 2013 on this issue and no action. Other WebKit browsers like Orion don’t do the same thing; it’s not a browser engine issue, so the only recourse is through Apple’s stupid feedback process that spits out autogenerated answers to everything. Windows is no better, but if Adobe, Affinity and a few medical anatomy apps opened the doors to something similar to Proton… jeez.

Window management is fine, what is missing are half-split/full-screen shortcuts. There are many apps which can set them up, but a built-in possibility would fix most issues, since only a very small subset of users cares about tiling wm even on linux. Though, there was a new project the other day on HN, where SIP can remain on: https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace

I, for my part, have configured window placement shortcuts in Hammerspoon (also possible with KM, BTT and a what feels like a million of other apps) and am completely happy. I mostly look at the maximized terminal anyway, the splits do happen in neovim and tmux.

There are shortcuts to tile windows. Hold the green indicator in an app’s window.

Fully agree. For work I use Windows 11 and even without any third party tools, its ability to easily group and align windows using either the keyboard or mouse is vastly superior to what macOS has.

The only thing that macOS is still best at is Exposé. The smoothness, animations, superior Apple touchpads to make the gesture and then ths ease of picking the right window are second to none.

> Exposé

KDE 6's new Overview effect works really well

https://kde.org/announcements/megarelease/6/

Neither is even close to how smooth Gnome's overview is.

And macOS still renders only a single desktop for some reason.

Windows' multiple desktops implementation is half-baked and janky too. I was excited when they added that in Windows 10 but didn't end up using it because it's too awkward, slow, and limited.

I'm not sure why you're surprised. The macOS GUI has never been designed with power users in mind. If you wanted to enhance your experience as a power user, you always had to resort to 3rd party software. By using Apple products you accept to use them as they were designed to be used, and any customization of the experience is a luxury that could be taken away at any point. Apple knows best how you should use your computers, after all...

Linux is on the other side of that spectrum, but then you lose the benefit of a tightly integrated and curated ecosystem. If you're willing to give that up, and don't mind tinkering and frequently dealing with jank, then Linux might be for you.

Not really a big deal IMO, MacOS has loads of great software available to improve workflow. BetterSnapTool, BetterTouchTool, MOS, Dropzone, Slidepad, Raycast, TotalFinder (visor feature), iTerm2 (dropdown shell) etc.

BetterSnapTool is probably what you are looking for - for normal monitors the keyboard shortcuts for window management (modifier + arrows) are great, and for giant monitors the custom snap zones are great. My favourite feature is the ability to move/resize windows by holding down ctrl/shift while hovering over them.

These kinds of things are a big reason I stick with Mac, great ergonomics and automation.

Seems a better situation than the alternatives? You need a defensive mindset with Windows with their behaviours over the last 5 years

I use Mac for work, Linux/Gnome for personal use, and have used Windows up to and including 11 both personally and professionally in the past (although a lot less recently).

In terms of the desktop environment, I feel Mac is severely lacking behind. I know there are very mixed opinions on Gnome, but to me the Gnome UX feels extremely well thought out in comparison.

The apple ecosystem might be very well integrated, but in terms of the macOS UX it feels the exact opposite. Why can’t I close an app from mission control? Why can’t I launch apps from mission control, but need to e.g. open launchpad first? In Gnome the activities view unities all of those experiences in a way that is seamless and just clicks for me, but in macOS everything seems to be separate apps/features that don’t play together at all (out of the box at least). Add to that all the other small frustrations that you need to address with third party tools, it is - for me at least - a very unproductive out-of-the-box experience.

Of course this is subjective, and might be partially an issue of (my lack of) skill/experience.

Not to disregard your remarks, I suspect they are valid, but they come from habits of uses of others systems, and there's also the good practice to avoid introducing too much ways to do the same thing, because it's dramatically augments your chances that it is known by all (in the end), works well and as expected.

Hence launchpad is only here to shortcut finding your apps in the finder or the dock, mission control just an increment over spaces. Those are not replacement for dock. So quitting app, aside the app shortcut and menu, goes through the dock, either by dock app menu or ⌘+Q on the ⌘+tab app switcher.

This is entirely a skill issue. I don't mean that dismissively, let me teach you the Mac way to close apps.

You hit ⌘-Tab, this brings up a list of every app you have open. Keep the thumb on the ⌘. More tabs go right, ` goes left. For every app you want to close, hit Q. When done, release ⌘.

My preferred way to launch an app is ⌘-Space and the first few letters of its name. This can have some frustrating delays of a second or two, but it will for the most part remember what you've opened. Other users are much more dock-oriented, I keep it hidden on the side and use it seldom.

> ` goes left. For every app you want to close, hit Q

I didn't know about either of these, thanks.

Also apparently, up or down brings up a view of all the windows for that app.

A while ago I put together some hammerspoon lua for making cmd-tab go by window instead of by app because that's how my brain works, but it's slower than the native cmd-tab. Are there other similar hidden tricks for Dock.app (which, I presume, is the thing that makes the cmd-tab overlay appear)?

You can two-finger drag to make the selected app move around, although I rarely do so.

You can also three-finger drag down on the selected app to get Mission Control view for that app, to select a window directly. I do that somewhat more often.

Those are the other ones I know. Discoverability of the various affordances in the macOS interface is terrible, but it stays pretty consistent over the years.

There should be a manual of a couple hundred pages. I miss the days when that was standard.

Stage Manager was introduced in Ventura, which is definitely a form of window management. I don't think you can call that "badly stalled"?

Does anyone actually use Stage Manager though? Probably a bias on my part but I don't know anyone who use it ever

I do. I made myself try it for a week a while back For Science and ended up kinda liking it, at least enough not to bother turning it off again.

Yesterday my coworker asked me what neat window manager I’m using and it took me a moment because I’d forgotten about it.

Stage Manager is confusing as hell. It was designed for iPads in an attempt to give them some semblance of window management but even there it makes no sense. They tried to reinvent window management to be more "simple" but in doing so they made something WAY more complicated to the point where even computer-savvy folks can't figure out how to do basic tasks.

https://youtu.be/sFJuAjyWOc4?t=500

I don't, but was astonished to find out the majority of my team at work uses it, and has been for a while.

I don't personally care about advanced window management like tiling windows. But I do use Spaces constantly to divide my screen into "work" and "personal", and Apple has introduced a huge, annoying bug macOS Sonoma that is not being fixed.

Since Sonoma, windows regularly are stuck on top of other windows. This has been known since the betas in 2023 [1] and persists till this day. It typically happens during restoring after a reboot, but it can happen at basically any time when a window is created a space that isn't the first one.

The workaround is to drag the window from the second space into the first, release the mouse button, and then drag the window back into the second space. This appears to reset whatever the internal state keeps track of window order.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/16bb19g/sonoma_finde...

Linux pulled ahead of macOS for desktop computing like 3 years ago.

But, that was about 3 years after desktop computing became this niche thing that only GenX/Boomers still do... (T_T)

It took me a seriously long amount of time to realize this wasn't software for MANAGING AN ACTUAL BAR/PUB.

Must be frustrating as a Mac user to be locked into paying lots of money to have a desktop OS that works how you want

It turns out Safari isn't for backpacking expeditions in Tanzania either

This is an article about a free, open source tool. Running FOSS tools to tweak my desktop isn't frustrating.

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