Bartender
Organize your Menu Bar Apps
Organize your Menu Bar Apps
23 October 2012
It’s Out!!!
We are incredibly pleased to announce the release of Bartender Version 1.0.
We believe Version 1.0 is fantastic, it has some cool new additions that we are sure you will love.
We cant thank you all enough for the fantastic feedback we have been getting. Due to sheer numbers it has not been possible to reply to you all. The work is not ending we have more great features we want to add and we also know there are still some outstanding bugs we need to fix, and some we probably don’t know about yet, so please do keep the feedback coming!
This means we are officially leaving Beta! Therefore anyone who does not have a license will be on the 4 week trial, starting from the first launch of this new version. Also since we are leaving Beta the 50% discount available for the licenses ended on October 25th.
03 October 2012
Wow! Autumn is here already as the work on Bartender has been progressing to exciting new levels. The time has flown as our new “Item ordering” feature is coming together.
This feature allows you to quickly and simply re-order your icons with a CMD+drag sideways directly within the Bartender Bar and the main Menu Bar! Release 0.9.13 out today simply extends the Beta period until our next version is ready.
We will be releasing it very soon once we have it polished to our usual high standards.
05 August 2012
We have been working hard for a few months now to get individual system item control into Bartender. We released the first public version of this on Monday 30th July, in version 0.9.08. As you can imagine with such an addition we expected bugs and jumped on fixing them as fast as possible, introducing versions 0.9.09 and 0.9.10.
As of 0.9.10 System Item control is stable with a few small fixes coming in the next release. We feel this is the release that shows the full potential of Bartender allowing you to have exactly the menu bar setup you want. Thanks goes out to everyone for the great feedback and kind words of how much you love the new feature, it’s always good to know we’ve hit the spot!
In addition to system item control, we have also started introducing Retina graphics. We plan to have Bartender completely retina ready very soon! Adam Betts was kind enough to allow us to include his fantastic “more” icon in Bartender.
We’ve experienced a big jump in users with the release of Mountain Lion! This is due to the fantastic new Mountain Lion feature; Notification Center. Although its innovative, many users do not want this icon in their Menu Bar but wish to keep the feature. Bartender works perfect for this!
05 August 2012
With the release of Mountain Lion, we now have the Fantastic Notification Center! The only issue many users have with Notification Center is the Menu Bar Icon it insists we all have if we want to use it….well…….unless you have Bartender!
Bartender allows you to control the Notification Center Menu Bar Item, either hiding it completely or having it in Bartenders Bar for access when you want. All Notification Center features still work as usual.
28 June 2012
Well WWDC was Fantastic! Great meeting so many developers and Apple Engineers from around the globe in one place. We had some interesting discussions and have some neat ideas for the future!
As for Bartender, we have been focusing on two branches, bug fixes and new features:
Fixing some nasty little bugs that have been causing crashes for some of our users, and preventing Bartender from installing for others. Spotlight and Launchbar are now fixed. You now have control regarding the auto-hiding of Bartender bar on and off; find this new feature in preferences. These are in release 0.9.07
New Features! We have been working on controlling individual Apple Menu system items, (we really miss the clock!). It’s looking promising, not ready for release yet, but we’re getting there. Also, we want better control of showing when an App updates it’s Menu bar icon. We discussed this area with Apple Engineers at WWDC, and have some leads on implementing this fine control within Bartender. All art work and UI are being updated to make Bartender Retina Ready. And finally, we are working on the best way to allow you to order your Menu bar items, both in the Menu bar and in Bartender. All these great new features are still in development and we hope to have most of them in the next release.
So with all the work in progress, release 0.9.07, is principally a stability and bug fix release.
Rest assured we are working on the features you all want and they will be coming soon.
29 May 2012
Wow its calming down a bit here now, so we have had time to do what we love most, code! We have just released 0.9.06 which includes lots of internal changes, lots of bug fixes, and some new features we are working on. Here’s a quick rundown of whats new! ….Drum roll please….
Please check out the new features and keep an eye for anything not quite right, let us know what next great feature you want!
We are now going to look at allowing you to reorder items in the Bartender Bar using CMD and drag, and hope to perhaps allow setting the order for items in the Menu Bar too. We want to see if we can control individual Menu Extra’s and have some in Bartender whilst others remain in the Menu Bar.
But first we are leaving this weekend for WWDC!! Wahooo! 2 weeks in San Francisco and cant wait. If you have any suggestions of stuff to do whilst there contact us and let us know! Planning to do the sights like the bridge and alcatraz before a little keynoting on Monday!
03 May 2012
Wow! Its been a crazy week for Bartender. We have been featured on many sites and blogs all around the world!! It turns out South Korea have a real issue with busy menu bars, and we are “big in Japan!”.
Hundreds of feedback emails have been reviewed, and are still flying in every hour. Fantastic to hear all your thoughts so keep them coming, have your say in making Bartender the best it can be! Read on for what we are working on currently:
We are working hard fixing a few app compatibility issues we have; this includes Clusters displaying twice, and other apps not working correctly when the menu bar item is removed and added back. This turned out to be quite a big change so we are carefully testing it lots before we release. The Clusters issue we have fixed for the next version.
Theres been reports of Bartender requiring high performance graphics on MacBook Pro’s that have dual graphics cards. This was due to some OpenGL drawing we did. We hope to have removed all need for OpenGL solving that issue.
We are looking into 1Password Helper as we really love 1Password and want this working! Same goes for LogMeIn.
A popular request is for Bartender Bar to automatically hide! This is trickier than it seems, as the apps in the bar can take focus (this is when a menu would normally hide) but it doesnt look good when using an item in the bar if it hides. As always, we will strive for the perfect solution. Watch this space!
System items and third party Menu Extra’s, these can already be hidden and arranged by holding down CMD and dragging, but users are wanting these in the Bartender Bar. Technically these are very different to Menu Bar Apps so we need to investigate further to see if we can add these to Bartenders Bar. We are looking into it.
Updates currently display for 5 seconds. In our internal build we have the time it displays selectable per app. We are also going to have this autoextend as updates come through, so a item that is continually updating shouldnt flash on and off. You will see this in an update soon!
We want to make the Bartender Bar match your menu bar style, as in transparency etc. We are also going to look into theming. Any suggestions or icon designs are welcome!
We have been looking into a bug that prevents apps from working till they are restarted or OSX is restarted. This is turning out to be difficult to fix without the restart. We are deciding if we should just bite the bullet and require the restart or suggest a restart when Bartender is installed? What do you think? Your feedback would be good on this.
There are still some crashes occurring which we are working to fix, and bugs we squish as we find.
Hope this gives you an idea of what we are currently looking into. Thanks again for all your thoughts!
BTW, Ben will be at the much anticipated WWDC 2012!! …so look out for him!
12 April 2012
The first public Beta of Bartender has just been released!
We are confident that most bugs have been squished, but by releasing as beta initially we hope that users testing with all their apps will make a rock solid version 1.0.
The plan is to keep Bartender free for as long as we are in Beta, but you can get a license at 50% off for those of you that just cannot wait!