Bartender Enters a New Era with Top Shelf
For the past few weeks, I've been beta testing a new release of Bartender; an app with an interesting, and at times slightly controversial, history. Despite that, it's a utility I've relied on for years. I recently did a deep dive into the problems macOS changes have created for menu bar managers and what those changes mean going forward. Even with a few lingering issues in the category, I still came away viewing Bartender as the best overall option for serious Mac users. The new release, called Bartender Pro, expands beyond traditional menu bar management with a feature called Top Shelf. The idea is simple: turn the MacBook notch into something genuinely useful instead of leaving it as dead space. The developers are entering an increasingly crowded area occupied by apps like Droppy and DynamicLake Pro, both of which are also trying to claim that piece of Mac interface real estate. Top Shelf supports temporary file storage, clipboard history, AirDrop access, widgets, media controls, live weather, calendar views, and what Bartender calls "live activities." One particularly interesting addition is support for displaying the status of running Claude Code or Codex sessions directly from the notch area. That puts Bartender Pro in direct competition with Droppy for AI-focused workflow integration. I'm fortunate to have a small home lab with several Macs available for testing. I've been running Bartender Pro on my M2 MacBook Air with the latest version of macOS, and overall the implementation feels thoughtful and mature. The developers have integrated the new functionality cleanly into Bartender's existing settings architecture rather than bolting on a second interface. The Top Shelf interface itself is polished and visually cohesive with macOS. More importantly, it offers enough customization that power users should be able to shape it around their workflow instead of adapting to someone else's idea of how the notch should work. Enabling or disabling features is straightforward, and the configuration process never feels overly complicated. One feature Bartender Pro offers that I have not seen handled as well elsewhere is its dynamic interaction with the Bartender Bar itself. The app intelligently avoids hiding menu bar items behind the notch interface, which sounds minor until you actually start using multiple notch utilities and discover how messy that problem can become. Importantly, none of this replaces the traditional Bartender experience. The new functionality is strictly additive. Bartender 6 is still available as a standard one-time purchase for $20, and the company has been explicit that core menu bar management is not being moved behind a subscription wall. For users interested in Top Shelf and the broader Pro feature set, Bartender Pro is available as a $15/year subscription. That includes Bartender 6 along with all upgrades released during the subscription period. The Bartender team has clearly invested serious effort into getting this release right. During the beta period, updates arrived constantly, feedback was actively incorporated, and bug reports received prompt attention. That responsiveness matters, especially for utility software operating this deeply inside the macOS interface. If you are evaluating notch utilities or trying to build a cleaner AI-oriented Mac workflow, Bartender Pro deserves a serious look.
Collected discussion
That’s cool and all but I’d prefer they focus their efforts on making the base product work correctly. Granted a lot of that is on Apple for their nonsense but even with it being the “best” option icons don’t properly update, triggers frequently don’t work correctly, ect ect ect. Not to mention the eternal purple dot .
The basic bartender doesn’t even work for me and I’m talking about the base feature of hiding icons I even updated to the latest macOS thinking it would work but still no luck I ended up going to thaw which at least achieves the basic feature.
"the company has been explicit that core menu bar management is not being moved behind a subscription wall." Bullshit. I live in 2026 where shrinkflation and enshitification run rampant. Where capitalism and greed rule. This app can fuck right off.
I’m right there with you on your analysis of economics but I’ve been talking to the development team at Bartender for about 18 months. They’ve always been honest and helpful. I talk to a lot of developers of Mac Apps, literally hundreds. The Bartender team is class. If you’ve never dealt with them, you’d be surprised. These are actual real people with names, not faceless corporate drones from BigTech.
I’m sorry, but there is absolutely nothing here that necessitates a subscription. Bartender’s newish owners need to be knocked down a peg or two for being greedy, simple as that. 0/10 until they remove this ridiculous subscription and build the “Top Shelf ” functionality into Bartender with no further restrictions This isn’t a knock against you u/amerpie, but in future it would be appreciated if you would evaluate the utility of an app’s subscription and whether it truly makes sense or not. Based on what you have described here about the new Top Shelf functionality, this subscription offers nothing beyond fattening the developers’ bank accounts
Personally, I’d rather support Droppy and their continued development then give anything more to Bartender. They lost a lot of good will the way they’ve handled, well, almost everything the last couple of years. Before that I would happily support them. After that , I don’t even use the couple of licenses that I paid for.
The developer of Droppy never struck me as a greedy guy, but I can’t say the same for the developers of Bartender. Absolutely nothing described here required a subscription. The only reason that the Top Shelf functionality is being locked behind a subscription is greed, plain and simple.
I've upgraded through 5 versions, and have patiently waited for Bartender 6 to overcome its many, many regressions. I understand that there were changes in macOS that required workarounds. But to walk up to my laptop and be greeted with an upgrade window for Bartender that informs me that there is now a subscription-based "Bartender Pro"... well, it just pisses me off, frankly. - Make the base product work before trying to sell me on a "Pro" subscription - Has this product been taking your attention away from making Bartender 6 -- which I paid for -- work properly? - I generally don't like updates for paid software products being used to carry upsell and advertisements I am *out*.
What is the pricing for previous mega supporters?
This is dead. Paid before, not paying again. You lost the market with poor management of the app and payment strategy
You mean "they", not "you". I'm just a guy on Reddit who beta-tested an app, not the developer or distributor.
After a long time of Bartender not working for me and giving problems, I switched to an app called 'Ice' that works perfectly, is free, and does the same things that Bartender did when it worked.
I stopped using it because of the cursor disappearing soooo many times every day that was really irritating. I hope they fix(ed?) that.
u/amerpie Thanks for the review. Didn't even know about this Bartender Pro.. Curious, how much RAM does Bartender and Bartender Pro now use? It was constantly consuming 1GB+ on my machine. Is that fixed now? Over the last year I've revisited the app, but still the same issue. With Barbee if get around 150 MB.
I upgraded Bartender 5 to 6 earlier this year because the upgrade cost was trivial. I hoped that they had resolved some of the egregious issues but as Apple has released new dot updates, Bartender has, once again, become a nightmare. Just prior to buying the upgrade, I bought a license for Barbee because it seemed the most stable at the time. I'm not sure where it's going now or in the future but I'm hopeful. Now, to the point of my message: How does Thaw compare to Barbee? What advantages does it have? What disadvantages does it have? How has the developer been regarding support? I, for one, am tired of some of the one-off developers who create (or I should say "fake") an app and then either grow tired of it or find it's too much work to maintain or improve it. Oh, and they ALWAYS had a Pro version for some outrageous amount which had basic features that should have been included originally. I've been a Mac user since 1983/4 and I wish that we could bring back the freeware/shareware era where so many of these new apps would have been free or less than $20. Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.
Because of changes in macOS, this whole category of apps has been pretty much a mess for the last year. The most problem free menu bar management app is HiddenBar but it also has very few features. The ultimate solution is to reduce and eliminate menu bar applications or to combine them all into an app like ExtraBar.
The biggest problem I have is the constant screen capture notification. No way to avoid it, so I can never tell whether my screen is actually being captured [i.e. by any app other than bartender]
I too have searched the Internet for “how do I make that Purple shit get off of my menu bar.”
Curious how one becomes a beta tester for this app. I’ve been using it for years.
I sent you a PM
Yea it doesn’t work for me. It just says waiting for hover and does nothing
the "strictly additive, base product stays one-time" framing is smart. the backlash from the ownership change still lingers so being explicit about what's not behind the subscription wall probably matters more than the feature list right now
So, the shenanigans continue with the new owners turning Bartender into a convoluted, bloated mess. None of the new functionality has anything to do with managing menu bar icons. It’s like the new Creative Modem Blaster.
I have a Bartender Mega Supporter license but I recently uninstalled it in favour of Thaw 2.0 beta. Bartender 6 just isn't reliable with the basics: never remembered where I placed my icons, frequently failed to update them, seemed constantly confused with my MacBook's notch. The new 'Bartender Pro' upgrade is confirmation that I've made the right choice moving to Thaw, which works great with the basics (on the latest beta; it was a little flaky on the stable release) and it's free.
I recently discovered „Atoll“, a completely free and open source Dynamic Island/notch app.