PSA: Bartender Mac App Under New Ownership, But Lack of Transparency Raises Concerns
PSA: Bartender Mac App Under New Ownership, But Lack of Transparency Raises Concerns
Popular Mac app Bartender appears to have been quietly sold approximately two months ago, with neither the prior owner nor the current owner...
I've been a paying user since 2015. This makes me sad, as it's one of my most beloved utilities and this isn't a good look. I'll keep running it without updating until it stops working or I find a replacement that I like. Also:
https://sixcolors.com/link/2024/06/bartender-has-a-new-owner/
You're viewing a single thread.
@some_guy A few people in Reddit recommended Ice (https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice). If you are concerned that Ice doesn't (yet) allow adjusting the space between icons like Bartender does, see https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/67 - there the developer says it's on the roadmap but in the meantime there are a couple of links that show how to change it from the terminal.
#MacOS #Bartender5I'm not shy of command line config, so that's good to know. I copied both Ice and the other recommendation from SixColors to my RIL apps. I'll check them out when I start seeing reasons to move off of my present install of Bartender. Until then, it still does everything I want in ways that I like. Thanks for the heads up!
I'm more concerned that it requires Accessibility and Screen Recording privileges to do the same job that Hidden Bar does without any of those.
Not that I don't trust the author here, since the source code is open after all – I simply do not have the time to audit it myself. And even if I did, I'd have to turn off auto update in order to prevent a similar switcharoo sneaking by without my knowledge.
@MacNCheezus Hidden Bar definitely looks interesting. Unfortunately, as with Ice it also does not include a way to change the spacing between the icons, so you would still have to use the terminal commands to do that, but I do appreciate the fact that it doesn't require those permissions. I have no idea why a program that only manipulates the visibility of items in the menu bar would need those permissions.
It works for me. I used to be a paying customer of Bartender until I upgraded to Sonoma and was asked to pay yet again.
Hidden Bar may be somewhat minimalistic but it does the part I really need well enough. The extra features were nice but not really necessary.
Thank you! For me, ice is the perfect replacement for bartender even though it doesn’t have all those features yet