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Comment by web3-is-a-scam | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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_...

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