Not my laptop
Not my laptop

Where We Are… And Why

macOS 26 (Tahoe) is now months into its lifespan. The UI chaos it caused for menu bar management apps has calmed down a bit, but the situation is still far from stable.

A combination of API limitations, OS-level redesigns, and tighter security controls broke many of the assumptions apps like Bartender, Ice, and Barbee relied on. As a result, behavior that used to be predictable is now anything but.

Common symptoms include:

  • icons disappearing and reappearing randomly
  • the OS overriding the order of icons
  • management apps losing track of icon positions
  • items reindexing themselves
  • settings resetting
  • hidden items suddenly reappearing

Even something as basic as determining whether a menu bar icon is visible has become unreliable. For example, NSStatusItem.isVisible can return true even when the icon is hidden behind the notch or pushed offscreen by menu titles.

The new OS-level menu bar controls are also incomplete. Tahoe will quietly hide items when the bar gets crowded, and apps receive no notification when that happens. From a developer’s perspective, the OS is moving the furniture around without telling anyone.

To work around this, some menu bar managers now request:

  • Screen Recording permission
  • Accessibility access
  • Event monitoring

That understandably makes some users uneasy. Worse, Tahoe’s restrictions on these permissions sometimes cause side effects such as ghost clicks, cursor interference, or other input glitches across the system.

None of this is malicious; it’s just what happens when an ecosystem built on clever workarounds collides with a new security model.

What the Future Probably Looks Like

Long term, the situation likely resolves in one of three ways:

  1. Apple ships a real menu bar overflow manager
  2. Apple exposes proper status-item APIs for developers
  3. The category slowly fades as launchers replace menu bar workflows

The third possibility is already happening.

Launchers are increasingly taking over tasks that used to live in the menu bar. The bar itself is drifting toward a status display, not an interaction surface. You glance at it to see whether something is syncing or connected. When you actually want to do something, you open a launcher.

Accepting a Partial Solution

Over the past few months I’ve tested most of the menu bar managers currently available. Like many power users, I ended up choosing the option that annoys me the least. That is not the same thing as finding a solution that makes me happy.

Different setups behave differently. The manager that works well for Power User A might be completely unusable for Power User B depending on hardware, display configuration, and which menu bar apps are installed.

Here’s where things landed for me:

  • Hidden Bar
    Too minimal and largely unmaintained.
  • Ice / Thaw
    Interesting ideas; still plagued by the usual Tahoe bugs.
  • Barbee
    Visually polished but inconsistent in day-to-day use.
  • Sanebar
    Promising; currently suffers from the same underlying instability.
  • Bartender
    Still buggy, but actively maintained and responsive to user feedback.

For now, Bartender still wins in my setup because nothing else matches its feature set:

  • The Bartender Bar, which shows active but hidden apps
  • Three icon states: Menu Bar, Bartender Bar, and Hidden
  • Adjustable menu bar spacing
  • Icons that appear only when an app changes state (great for cloud sync indicators)
  • Presets for different icon layouts
  • Automations triggered by conditions; for example, hiding the battery icon unless charge drops below 50%

To keep things stable, I avoid several features that add extra system hooks:

  • Appearance customization
  • Menu bar search (Raycast handles that better anyway)
  • Automatic icon reordering
  • Complex trigger rules

Changing the Workflow

One tactic that has helped a lot is simply reducing my reliance on menu bar interfaces altogether.

Many tasks I used to perform through menu bar icons now live elsewhere:

  • Raycast for launching and quick actions
  • ExtraBar for custom shortcuts
  • BetterTouchTool triggers
  • Apple Shortcuts automations

In some cases I just disable icons entirely using the menu bar controls in System Settings. A few functions have migrated to Control Center as well.

The result is a much quieter menu bar.

Back in August 2024 I wrote a post about everything living in my menu bar at the time:

I had 43 icons.

Today I have six:

  • Alter
  • ExtraBar
  • Dato
  • Bartender
  • MountMate
  • Ollama

And honestly, that feels about right.

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