End the menu bar nightmare once and for all with Bartender 5
YOUR MAC’S MENU bar is a good place for apps to store icons providing quick access to their settings, but it can quickly fill up with macOS features and third–party apps. When that happens, your menu bar goes from ordered neatness to unruly bedlam, overflowing with tiny icons and with no way to hide them. The problem is compounded if your Mac has a notch, which can end up obscuring icons if they get pushed behind it.
Enter the recently updated Bartender 5. The popular Mac app automatically hides surplus icons and shows them only when you choose to reveal them. Its latest version comes with a plethora of helpful extra features that make managing menu bar items a breeze.
END MENU BAR MAYHEM
For example, you can set hotkeys that will not only reveal hidden icons but click on them too, helpfully opening menus for you. You can add spacers to the menu bar for better organization, or tell Bartender 5 to run an AppleScript when you arrive at a location or when your battery reaches a certain point. And that’s just a snippet of what it can do.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the different features of Bartender 5. Most of our tips revolve around the app’s settings menu, which you can access by holding Option and clicking the “…” button that appears in your menu bar. Now, let’s start organizing your items and reining in the menu bar chaos.
HOW TO Take control of your menu bar with Bartender 5
When you first launch Bartender 5, it will automatically hide your menu bar items. You can show them again by clicking any empty menu bar space, clicking the “…” button, or swiping left to right on the menu bar.
By default, hidden items are revealed inside the menu bar, but you can instead show them below it in a separate box. In the app’s settings, click General and enable “Show items in bar below menu bar (Bartender Bar)”.
Under Menu Bar Items, drag
