February 2022 • Macworld 49decade, across four versions, Surtees
Studio’s app has let you pick which
menu items get prime territory, always
appearing, and which are delegated
to a secondary menu you can trigger
or are hidden altogether. And the
app offers this with drag-and-drop
simplicity. The only non-intuitive part
about Bartender is that you need to
option-click its bow-tied icon to reveal
an option to show its preferences.
This is a distinct improvement over
the previous releases, which offered
a separate item
in Bartender
preferences to
set parameters
for each menu
bar icon. Now,
the Menu
Bar Layout
preferences just
let you drag an
icon into the
position you want
for either always
shown, hidden
until revealed, or always hidden. While
version 4 required a compatibility
break – it only works with Big Sur or
later – Bartender has become much
more agile and graphically minded in
its maturity. (If you’re running Catalina
or earlier releases, a Bartender 4
license works with version 3. See the
company’s FAQ at fave.co/3DHXe9m
for details and downloads.)
Seeing just what you want is one
thing, but getting to your stashed
menu icons is another. To reveal theReorganizing the visible menu into a neat set of options is paired with an elegant
hover-over option to reveal more items that are otherwise hidden.
Drag-and-drop simplicity now lets you organize what appears,
what’s hidden until revealed, and what doesn’t show up at all.