Is your menubar getting just a little, well, crufty? With more and more apps taking advantage of this handy place to put notification and mini-app icons for extra functionality, it seems like the menu bar is like that bar down the street where they’ll let just anyone in. Today’s tip should help clean up the Menu Bar apps on your Mac. You’re on your own for the neighborhood watering hole.
Bartender allows you to hide specific menu bar apps or all of them as you like, making the top strip on your Mac monitor just that bit more classy looking.
Head on over to the Bartender website, and download the demo, which is “free whilst in beta.” Once the downloaded file is unzipped, launch it and it will ask to install a small file to help it work. Type in your admin password and you’re good to go.
There are three tabs at the top of the Bartender preferences window. Click on the Menu Items tab to select what want to do with each menu bar app you have installed. Choose whether Bartender will do nothing, show the app in the Bartender bar, but not in the menu bar, or to completely hide the app from both places.
The General tab allows you to launch Bartender at Login, whether or not to show Bartender by default, and what icon to use for that purpose. You can also reset the location of Bartender here, as well as auto-check for updates.
Bartender bar works on the third-party menubar apps, but not the system-based ones. If you truly want to disappear all the items in the menu bar, you’ll need to go into System Preferences and disable them there.
Got an OS X tip? Need help troubleshooting OS X? Drop me a line or leave a comment below.
