50 Macworld • February 2022REVIEWS
hidden item collection, Bartender 4
lets you hover over any blank space
in the menu – the secondary menu
bar gracefully appears. You can also
option-click the app’s
icon and choose ‘Quick
Search menu bar items’ to
see a full list and search
among them. If you use
that feature frequently,
Bartender lets you set a
hotkey for its preferences.
You can tweak settings
for a bit more subtlety, too.
In the Show For Updates
settings, for example, you
can set triggers to display
icons that only reveal atcertain times. Predefined triggers
include showing the battery icon
when your Mac is drawing battery
power. You can define your own
triggers down to the level of having
Bartender observe changes in a
menu icon’s appearance, which
is the kind of nifty thinking that
makes this tool invaluable for
menu bar management.
One tip: Retrain yourself from
using the macOS shortcut of
Command-dragging to re-arrange
icons with Bartender active: the
app can’t override macOS’s desire
for control when you do that, and
it can cause some pretty spectacular
temporary menu bar madness.
If you’re ever in an app and its
splayed-wide menus hide a menu youToo many menu items? Use Bartender’s
search option to find the one you want.You can use prefabricated triggers to show menu
icons when something of note happens, or even
customize your own.