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Mac Menu Bars

macmenubars.com

46 pointsimd2323 comments

What really frustrates me is how many apps that are useful in the menu bar do not have monochrome icons.

Cisco's anyconnect is a super bright icon. Tunnelblick is either yellow or the icon looks super washed out and does not work with retina displays. Dropbox defaults to a colorful icon (why!?)

I think a lot more apps might go colorful with Yosemite. If you switch to dark mode the monochrome icons don't really work. So either go with a colorful icon or design two (light and dark) monochrome icons. Not too sure if you can switch the icon automatically based on the system theme though.

Well considering most of the time you have a flipped monochrome icon anyway for when the icon is highlighted it'd just be a case of switching between the two.

I'm definitely curious if you can switch automatically. It'd be a huge oversight if you couldn't.

Bjango says[1] they've made iStat Menus 5 compatible with dark mode, I'd be shocked if that wasn't automatic. And a project[2] on github has some discussion about solutions to make it automatic, looks simpler than I first assumed.

[1]http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

[2]https://github.com/pilotmoon/Scroll-Reverser/pull/11

The latest BetterTouchTool nightlies have both light and dark monochromatic icons.

Latest tunnelblick beta comes with monochrome icons.

Shameless plug: I made a silly little Mac menu bar app called Satellite Eyes that automatically changes your desktop image to the satellite/map view from overhead your current location. I just pushed out a version that supports retina quality tiles, where available.

http://satelliteeyes.tomtaylor.co.uk

Is there a way to run the app but hide the icon?

Not at the moment. The icon shows useful information like whether a map is downloading or there's a location error. It's all open source, so happy to accept a pull request though.

https://github.com/tomtaylor/satellite-eyes/

I've used this for years and love it.

Thanks!

The content on the site seems rather old?

Anyway best app to manage the menubar is imho http://www.macbartender.com/ and well worth the price.

Yes Bartender really gives you back your clean menubar and enables you to regain control over it. Here is mine: http://cl.ly/image/0s0U2V0B000m

I really don't like the approach of some OSX developers to ignore Apples Interface guidelines regarding the menubar, either accidentally or at will, maybe to elevate their apps inside the menubar with colored icons.

Besides the usual suspects, such as Dropbox, TextExpander, Fantastical; I have "The Clock"[1] which shows me time of cities I added. The Clock allows me to slide the timer to see what time will it be anywhere in the world against another clock or my local clock. Other utilities such as Spectable[2], 1Password[3] Helper stays totally hidden and is nowhere to be seen even in the menubar.

All of the above menubar apps are managed by Bartender[4], which allows me to show/hide, hide in bar but show in bartender or totally hide it.

1. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-clock-the-best-world-clo...

2. http://spectacleapp.com/

3. https://agilebits.com/onepassword

4. http://www.macbartender.com/

interesting, but appears to have been last updates 2 years ago.

I love iStat as a replacement for system controls: the clock, battery and seeing stats for cpu, temperature, network.

http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

Thanks for posting this - just what I needed!

The Mac used to plop down icons of the extensions it was loading as it booted. Does anyone remember the "vanity icon" extension that you could put a lot of other cool looking icons into, and it would plop those icons down, delaying between each, as it booted?

The worst part about the menubar itself is that you can't set it to be black without an add-on.

Modifying dock icons isn't hard, but it shouldn't be necessary.

My menubar: Flux, Gmail, Twitter, Temperature, Network, Time.

Actually, OS X Yosemite has a black menu bar built in, in 'dark mode': http://www.maclife.com/files/imagecache/futureus_imagegaller...

Unfortunately, not all apps support white menu bar icons and thus the result will vary.

What do you use for temperature?

smcFanControl -- I use it on my old early-2008 MBP. It had a known issue with the GPU. I had it replaced once, and live with the fear it will happen again.

Really good concept, I have already found some useful productivity apps. Maybe we could throw similar approaches for sharing general configuration tips on HN.

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