Bartender for the Mac

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Below in the first photo you will see how my menu bar usually looks. As you can tell it is getting a little out of control. A lot of what is up there are applications that I use occasionally, and I want them in my menu bar. However I really don’t need to see them, including  default menu applications like the Airport icon, the eject button and the Time Machine indicator. I was looking for an application that could organize my menu items better and I found that application in Bartender. There is a four-week trial period for Bartender, but I suspect if you are like me you will buy it long before the four weeks are up. It cost $19.00 to license Bartender.

Once you install Bartender. It will show up with the preference open and all the apps that are in your menu bar on the left hand side of the box. On the right hand side of the box it will give you three options:

  • nothing Bartender doesn’t do anything (item remains in default menu bar)
  • show in Bartender bar, but not in menu bar
  • completely hide menu bar item

Now you can go through each of your menu items and decide where you want them. When you want to see an item that is in the Bartender bar you can either click on the Bartender icon or if you go into advance options under the Bartender preferences you can create a hot key. You can also create a hot key to show all menu bar items including hidden ones. The default icon for Bartenders is two dots, however you can change to icon by going Preferences and then General. There are some icons available, but you can also use your own image.

Bartender is one of those applications that does one thing and it does it well. It is not available through the Mac app store, you can download the application at the Bartender website. With the four-week trial there is no reason not to try it.

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