August 2019 • Macworld 83FEATUREyou might be able to reduce those thoughts into
a basic set of Hazel rules and let the computer do
the work automatically.
Power in the Menu Bar
I’ve extolled the virtue of the Mac’s menu bar in
this space before, but my menu bar is made a lot
better by the addition of a few clever utilities.
Bartender (£12.40 from fave.co/2xBLlm4) lets
me clean up my menu bar, hiding icons I don’t use
as often beneath a single item. That leaves room
for more items that I actually want to see, like the
graphs from Bjango’s iStat Menus (£9.99 from
fave.co/2LH2KBP). iStat Menus provides you with
glanceable information about your Mac’s current
status, from processor temperatures to the work
being done by individual processor cores.
Rogue Amoeba’s SoundSource ($35, around
£28, from fave.co/2L8cqWF) gives me complete
control over where the audio on my Mac is going.
I can quickly reroute iTunes from my external
speakers to my headphones, and adjust the output
volume, right from its drop-down control panel.
And the free BitBar (fave.co/2xyYmg0) lets
me put more or less anything I want into my menu
bar, via an extensible plug-in system. I’ve got the
current weather status at my home weather station,
the speed of my local network, and even the number
of live listeners to my podcasts, all displayed in the
menu bar via small BitBar extensions.
Sure, the Mac is good without all of these
utilities. But with them, it’s great.