Bartender alternatives: their ownership and permissions

As us Bartender users are getting spooked by the surprise transfer from the original author to a new owner, I’ve compiled a table of the alternative options.

Or skip ahead if you’d like quick recommendations, ways to keep icons accessible without apps, information on alternate Bartender versions, or an explanation on why so many apps need Screen Recording permissions.

App	Price	Ownership	Permissions requested (info)	Development activity level	Extra-bar support	Menu styling	Triggers	Search	Hotkey support	Notes
Bartender	$22	Applause, a US company that buys out indie apps	Accessibility Screen recording	There are clues that company is focused on low-continual-development buyouts	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Ice	Free, donations accepted	Open source	Accessibility Screen recording	Actively developed	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	Always-hidden plus toggle-hidden areas:
Vanilla	Free base version, $10 paid version	Matthew Palmer	Accessibility Screen recording	Haven’t found version history, but developer seems active	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅ (paid version)	Paid version required to run on startup
Barbee	Free base version, $2.99/year (or $3.99 lifetime) premium version	HyperartFlow, a Chinese company	Accessibility Screen recording	Actively developed	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	Very featureful, but also feels unorthodox interface-wise
Hidden Bar	Free	Open source	None	Inactive, last commit 2+ years ago	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	Always-hidden plus toggle-hidden areas.
iBar	Free	Ningbo Shangguan Technology Co., a Chinese company	Accessibility Screen recording User library read/write	Actively developed	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	Nice looking “extra-bar” functionality:
Dozer	Free	Open source	None	Inactive, last commit almost 2 years ago	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	Supports 2 sets of icons, one that opens more icons when you click to the left of its icon, and another for option-clicking.
BetterTouchTool	$12	folivara.AI, a German company by Mac community fave Andreas Hegenberg	Accessibility Screen recording (depending on features used)	Actively developed	✅	❌	❌ (but could probably make trigger style things happen depending on your goals)	❌	✅✅✅	BTT isn’t specifically designed for these purposes, but the developer has made a preset for presenting an extra bar.
OnlySwitch	Free	Open source	System Events Bluetooth (for unrelated feature)	Actively developed	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	OnlySwitch isn’t primarily designed for this, it just has it as a side-feature.
Say No to Notch	Free, with donation in-app purchases	ChouTi.io, a Chinese company, I think	None	Inactive, last update almost 2 years ago	✅ (in a sense)	❌	❌	❌	❌ (but planned)	Including this purely because it addresses a kind of “extra-bar” need for users like me that mainly need menu bar items onscreen that are normally hidden by the notch.

For quick recommendations: which part of Bartender do you need to replace?

• Anti-clutter: some Bartender users have enough room for their icons and just want to clean up the clutter of their menu bar. All but one of the alternatives on this page help with that, and I think Ice is the best of the bunch right now.
• Extra-bar: if you’re on smaller screens, especially MacBooks with the Notch, Bartender was useful for being able to access the icons that were normally inaccessible. Ice is also a good choice for this, or if you’re already a BetterTouchTool user, Andreas’ preset works for a barebones-but-customizable version. You may also want to read the next section for a couple of tricks to help keep your icons accessible.

Extra-bar users: do you even need Bartender-style apps?

For those like me who primarily use Bartender as a way to access more icons on small screens, there are a couple of tricks that can eliminate/reduce the need for it:

Packing in more icons by taking out padding

Apple’s been spacing the menu bar items apart (some rumors suggest in preparation for a touch-based OS), but you can customize that spacing in a couple of ways:

1. Manually from the terminal.
2. With a free app made by the bafflingly productive Sindre Sorhus. His Menu Bar Spacing app might be of interest too.

For me, setting both the padding and spacing to 8 from the terminal got me pretty close to not needing a Bartender style app, while still leaving acceptably-large click-targets. Even with my crippling app addiction, my previously-Bartendered icons take up surprisingly little space compared to normal macOS settings:

I think this is how Bartender’s “Menu bar item spacing” feature works behind-the-scenes.

Prioritizing icons by re-arranging

This is old news to many, but when I first started using Macs, I didn’t realize that you could re-arrange menu bar items by holding down the Command key while dragging them with the mouse. I use this to prioritize my most important icons to the right so that they remain visible even when on smaller screens.

Alternate Bartender versions

From what I can tell, the most recently signed-by-the-original developer version is 5.0.49.

As of July 11, version 5.0.49 is still accessible from the official Bartender site. If that link displays oddly in your browser, do a Save Link As to get it as a downloaded version rather than displaying in browser.

You can verify it’s integrity by ensuring shasum -a 256 'Bartender 5.dmg' returns 0ce40bb5d6f0605c91ae2dc605d8cb7c534823ae5024cbc042ef417b8013071d

Depending on your level of concern about the change in ownership, 5.0.49 may not actually be that helpful though: it seems like the ownership transfer occurred well before this.

If your main concern is about the Amplitude product analytics, the new owners have said that version 5.0.54 removes them. This version is now available both directly and on SetApp.

Why so many apps need Screen Recording permissions

Most of these apps (Bartender included) need Screen Recording permissions. That’s because they’re grabbing images of the not-currently-displayed menu bar items, either for re-display elsewhere (like on an extra menu bar) or for triggering actions based on when the menu bar icon’s graphic changes.

Because of that, permission requests aren’t inherently suspicious, but do increase your “attack surface area” risks if an app is compromised or sold to a less scrupulous developer.

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