Bartender for Golden Gate Releases

This build is all about making Bartender feel quicker and keeping your menu bar images looking right. We've reduced the wait when opening items and rearranging your layout, improved the sizing of wider items, and made images refresh more reliably. There's also a new home for items hidden by macOS, plus clearer feedback when Bartender is updating your bar. Lots of little changes that should make a big difference in everyday use.

New

• Disabled Items: On macOS 27, Bartender can now detect some apps hidden through Control Center's settings. These appear in a separate Disabled Items section with their app icons, instead of getting mixed into Shown, Hidden, Always Hidden, or Bartender Bar. Detection is experimental, so it won't find every disabled item yet.
• Automatic image updates: Images refresh periodically while items are visible, so changing text and other updates can appear in Bartender too. Missing images can also be updated over time.

UI

• Wider items, such as Granola meeting titles and network activity displays, now appear at a more natural size in Bartender Bar and the layout editor, instead of being squeezed into a small icon-sized space.
• Improved spacing between items in Bartender Bar, removing the oversized gaps around some icons and wider items.
• Added an “Updating your Menu Bar” message and spinner while refreshing or recapturing. Consecutive updates keep the message visible, instead of repeatedly flashing the interface between states.
• The Menu Bar page should feel smoother as items update, with less stuttering while using the layout editor.

Fixes

• Reduced the delay between clicking an item in Bartender Bar and its menu opening. Clicking individual Stats widgets should also be more reliable.
• Hiding or rearranging an item now updates the layout sooner, so you can move on to the next item without the previous long wait.
• Improved reuse of previously captured images. A temporary capture failure should no longer replace a perfectly good menu bar image with the app icon.
• Fixed old images being squeezed into tiny previews when an item changes width. Bartender now replaces an image that no longer fits with a fresh capture when possible.
• Improved image capture around overlapping items.
• Fixed Recapture repeatedly trying unsuccessful captures and leaving the layout unavailable for too long. Existing usable images are kept when a replacement can't be captured, and image recovery gives way when you open an item.

Known Issues

• Groups are still unavailable, and some parts of the new interface haven't been localised yet.
• Disabled Items detection is experimental and may miss apps hidden in Control Center, particularly when the menu bar is overflowing.
• Compatibility work is continuing for apps such as iStat Menus and Setapp that hide their own items when other items are hidden. Affected items may be omitted from Bartender's layout for now.
• Apps with several menu bar items still share their visibility: you can order the items separately, but showing or hiding one affects the others.
• Switching profiles can still involve a longer wait than we'd like.
• The native overflow can still flicker briefly during some rearrangements. The option to automatically put items that don't fit into Hidden can help.

This build brings back menu bar spacing, adds more ways to customise the look of your bar, and introduces a new option for making room when you reveal hidden items. We've also cleaned up the permissions flow and fixed some frustrating cases where items would duplicate or open and immediately close. Top Shelf gets a couple of new looks too, including a glass background that lets your desktop show through.

New

• Menu bar spacing is back: You'll find it under Customize on the Menu Bar page, with the familiar illustrated options for Default, Small, Tiny, and No Spacing. You will need to sign out and back in for every app to pick up the change.
• Hide shown items when revealing hidden: A new option in General lets Bartender temporarily hide your normally shown items when you click the Bartender item or use a hotkey to reveal hidden items. This gives the hidden items more room, then restores your usual bar when you're done. The clock and Control Center stay visible. This option is disabled when using Bartender Bar.
• More appearance options: Material backgrounds have returned to menu bar styling, with adjustable thickness. Glass and material styles can now use Light, Dark, Match System, or Match Menu Bar. Match Menu Bar follows the appearance of your actual menu bar icons, so it can stay in step with your bar even when that differs from the rest of macOS. Bartender Bar's glass background gets the same appearance choices.
• New Top Shelf backgrounds: Alongside Standard, you can now choose Glass or Siri Style. Glass uses a dark appearance, while Siri Style stays solid black when collapsed and fades into glass as the shelf expands. Your choice is saved between launches and works on screens with or without a notch.
• Improved AppleScript support: Integrations can now get item details and app icons directly from Bartender 7, and reveal or click items using left, right, and Option-click actions. This also improves compatibility with tools such as Raycast.

UI

• Added a Menu Bar Access reminder below the header on the Menu Bar page. If access is missing, you can use Grant Access to try again without having to find your way back through setup.
• The permissions explainer now opens independently, instead of shifting the whole guide around. We've also removed the heavy shadow.
• Redesigned the window shown when access is required, with clearer explanations and quick access to purchase or sign in.
• Aligned the Bartender Bar appearance menus and tidied up the spacing illustrations so they fit properly inside their controls.

Fixes

• Fixed another case where existing profiles could show duplicate items in Hidden and Bartender Bar. Separate items from the same app should still remain separate.
• Fixed Command Bar sometimes taking focus back after opening an item.
• Fixed a case where an item such as Raycast would open and immediately close because Bartender sent a second click.
• Glass and material menu bar styles now keep their highlights when another app is active, instead of looking flat or inactive.
• Capsule menu bar styles now have correctly rounded ends on both sides, including when using separate pills.
• Background permission checks no longer repeatedly ask for access. Screen Recording permission changes should still be detected correctly on macOS 27.
• Exported app icons now retain their correct colours in integrations such as Raycast and Shortcuts (our official Raycast extension ships soon).
• Fixed a possible crash during menu bar crowding checks when one of Bartender's own windows was closing.

Known Issues

• Groups are still unavailable, and some parts of the new interface haven't been localised yet.
• Compatibility work is continuing for apps such as iStat Menus and Setapp that hide their own items when other items are hidden. Affected items may be omitted from Bartender's layout for now.
• Apps with several menu bar items still share their visibility: you can order the items separately, but showing or hiding one affects the others.
• Switching profiles can still involve a longer wait than we'd like.
• The native overflow can still flicker briefly during some rearrangements. The option to automatically put items that don't fit into Hidden can help.

This build continues bringing back familiar Bartender features while focusing on making the menu bar feel more stable day to day. We've returned Spacers, added real previews for your hidden items, and cleaned up a whole class of bugs where certain apps would duplicate, flicker, or jump around. As before, some interface elements are still temporary before the new design ships with Golden Gate's public release.

New

• Triggers have returned with a new look. Triggers are now found in the Automations page, and they've got a simplified editor. It's easier to quickly set up a trigger like “show battery when on battery” or “show stats when using Xcode.”
• Spacers are back. You can add your own spacers to the menu bar to create gaps or visually group items. Each spacer has an adjustable width and can optionally show a bit of text, an emoji, or an SF Symbol. Spacers are saved per profile, so different setups can have different spacing. To add one, drag the “Drag to add a spacer” chip from the palette beneath Always Hidden into the Shown or Hidden section — then click it to set its width and content, or right-click to remove it.
• Hidden items now show their real images. With “Show Bar Item Images” turned on, the Hidden rows on the Layout page display the actual menu bar item — captured straight from your bar — instead of a generic app icon. Bartender refreshes these previews automatically when it launches and whenever you switch the option on, and there's a “Recapture Items” button to refresh them by hand any time. A future update will enable an option for “live updates.”
• Show App Icons. A new Layout option overlays each item with its owning app's icon (or the Apple logo for system items), so it's easier to tell at a glance which app an item belongs to.
• Settings Imports. There's a new experimental import of your profiles from Bartender 6 into Bartender 7. Most items & spacers should line up correctly, but there may be some edge cases. Importing is non-destructive, so you can import again later if there's an issue you run into.

UI

• Layout options are now grouped into a single Customize section (Show App Icons, Show Bar Item Images, Spacers & Groups).
• Polished the Focus Mode interface.
• Fixed the settings sidebar occasionally losing its selection.
• Tidied up some wording, including the “Recapture Items” description.
• Added Bartender Bar as a discrete page, with its own styling options.

Fixes

• Apps with multiple items now more reliably rearrange independently of each other within a section.
• Items with a constantly updating label — OneDrive's sync status, a Granola meeting countdown, a CPU or network readout — no longer duplicate themselves, drift between positions, or pop back into the Shown section. This was behind the “why is there a random OneDrive in Shown?” behaviour, and items should now stay put.
• An app is now correctly exclusive to a single section. Moving one of an app's items into Always Hidden takes the rest with it, matching how Shown and Hidden already behaved, and an app can no longer end up listed in two sections at once. Layouts that were already split will “heal” themselves.
• Reduced menu bar flickering and repeated reloads, particularly with apps that update constantly, causing the bar to reload over and over.
• Various smaller stability fixes around item aliases and ordering.

Known Issues

• Groups are still temporarily disabled — they'll return soon.
• Localization is incomplete.
• Some apps, such as iStat Menus and Setapp, hide their own menu bar items whenever Bartender is hiding anything else, so we currently can't keep them visible. We've confirmed this can be prevented on the app's side, and we're working on compatibility. If you're the developer of an app like this, we'd love to work with you. We're already in touch with the iStat folks.
• These items will temporarily be invisible in Bartender to prevent issues caused by non-movable items being inside your layout. We expect this to be resolved around the release of Golden Gate, or shortly after.
• When an app has multiple bar items, you can rearrange them independently, but hiding or showing any one of them will hide or show all of them.
• After applying a profile, there's still a longer delay than we'd like before you can switch again.
• Some edge cases with the native macOS overflow can still cause the bar to flicker briefly while items rearrange. Enabling “Move items that don't fit on-screen into Hidden” is the best way to smooth this over.

This preview for Bartender brings back most of our previously disabled features, adds support for most overflow behaviours on macOS 27, and offers an early look at some of the new features coming with Bartender Seven. We’re saving most of our UI updates for a release just before Golden Gate ships to the public, so some interface elements are temporary.

In general, most features should work as expected, but there may be some remaining conflicts with the built-in overflow modes. You can enable automatic handling, which should prevent these issues, but you may see some temporary bar flickering while it settles on the correct width.

New

• Bartender Command Bar unifies quick search, activating presets, viewing and running your Automations, and, if you have Bartender Pro, your clipboard history. Command Bar enables mouse-free interaction with Bartender, supporting workflows like finding your weather app and quickly checking it without reaching for your mouse.
• Triggers have been renamed to Automations and include a new set of automation tricks. You can now use URLs to perform actions within Bartender. We’ve also made more legacy features visible, such as the Focus filter, which can hide items when you’re using a Focus mode like Work or Personal. In the final release, we’ll introduce a new way to design Automations that makes them easier to understand, even if you’re using a script.
• App Intents are now available in Bartender, exposing most of the options offered by our AppleScript implementation. You can get items, show or click them, change profiles, toggle your bar, and more.
• Hotkeys have been expanded with new options, including a “Focus Mode” that lets you hide everything in your menu bar with one quick shortcut. This works without disrupting your mouse and lets you clean things up for screen recordings. You can also quickly enable a preset with a hotkey.
• Bartender now lets you hide system items such as the clock or Control Center. These items can’t be moved around within the shown section, but you can choose to hide them.
• Presets can now be synced to your monitor setups without using an Automation. This lets you have a preset based on a monitor or monitor combination. It’s cleaner than ever to have a setup for your MacBook display that switches automatically when you connect your Studio Display.
• Presets have been simplified and now live inside the Layout page, so every interaction with the items in your bar lives in one place.

Fixes

• Bar styles with separate pills now update more reliably.
• Various small UI quirks have been addressed, such as icons periodically glitching in the shown, hidden, and always hidden sections.
• Memory usage has been reduced to a general target of less than 100 MB, and we’ll lower this over time.

Known Issues

• Triggers are still disabled, but they will return with a fresh look and more options than ever.
• Groups and Spacers are still temporarily disabled.
• “New items appear here” may not work as expected for some items.
• After applying a profile, there’s a longer delay than we’d like before you can switch again.
• Some apps, such as iStat Menus, don’t currently work with Bartender and are automatically hidden. We’re working on compatibility with specific apps like these, so if you find one that doesn’t play nicely with Bartender, please send it to us. If you’re the developer of an app that doesn’t work, we’d love to work with you on Golden Gate updates.
• When an app has multiple bar items, you can rearrange them independently, but hiding any of them will hide all of them. The same applies when showing them.
• Some edge cases with the native macOS overflow can cause the bar to flicker temporarily while we rearrange it. The best way to handle this is to enable “Move items that don’t fit on-screen into Hidden,” which temporarily shifts items into the hidden section.

This update for Bartender's Golden Gate Preview brings refinements to the layout pages, and ports over our suite of performance improvements from the latest Bartender 6 build.

New/Returning

• Hotkeys are partially re-enabled
• You can now toggle Bartender Bar with a hotkey to show at your mouse location, and quickly click an item to get it to show in the bar
• Profiles will now apply on launch, and correctly reset your bar on close
  • Please note that Bartender cannot show/hide any item you've hidden in Control Center
• Right clicking in empty bar space will allow you to open Bartender's menu
• The "New items appear here" chip is now available

Fixes

• The new Bartender Bar will no longer show when hovering over the left menu
• Toggling the bar should now no longer have a delay between show/hide
• The items you see in the app should update more frequently
• The gravity of the layout section should now be correct and always settle right-to-left like the menu bar itself
• The layout page should no longer see “disappearing icons”
• Dropping into hidden or always hidden will no longer require dropping on the “drop items here” element
• Items shown in hidden should only show if they’re currently running
• Fixed some crashes that could occur in setups with a mix of monitors

This build has an extended expiry date, but is otherwise identical to preview one.

The first alpha of Bartender for macOS 27 is available now. This first build is a slimmed down version of Bartender to get you back up and running on macOS 27, and we'll work on restoring more functionality over the beta period. Stability will improve over each beta of Bartender, and we'll aim to ship a build for every new beta that Apple ships too.

This preview is specifically for users on macOS 27, and will not function at all on previous versions of macOS.

This version of Bartender is entirely free to use, excluding Pro features.

Moving items in your bar should work better than ever, as should hiding/showing them. Bartender Bar will currently show icons of apps instead of the actual menu bar icon. Our goal is to restore full functionality before macOS 27 ships to the world this fall.

Bartender can now also function with no screen recording at all.

Due to more unrecoverable changes from Apple, we won't be able to maintain previous profiles ( yet ). If you're using on-demand mode, your default profile should remain roughly the same as it was before. We're aiming to recover these profiles in future with a migration step, and are not removing your underlying profiles.

Preview Changes

• Bartender no longer touches your mouse to move items. It only interacts with the mouse when you activate an item via Bartender Bar.
• Bartender Bar will show where your mouse is when you click/hover.
• The menu bar background used in the layout pages and Bartender Bar will update less frequently, so if you're rotating desktop backgrounds a lot, this may be slightly out of date.
• Bartender should now index your menu bar substantially faster than on previous versions of macOS.
• Individual item moves should now be performed faster than ever.
• Bartender Bar will show icons of apps, i.e. the ChatGPT icon, instead of the actual menu bar item. When these items are clicked, they will show the real icon in the bar.
• When clicking an item in Bartender Bar, the autohide timer should now always respect if the item has its own menu presented, and delay hiding it.
• Clicking or hovering in the menu bar will show Bartender Bar underneath the actual point you clicked, instead of always at the end.

Disabled Features

These features are currently disabled, but will return in a future update.

• Profiles
  • A basic version of profiles is available inside the layout page.
  • Your profile may not line up exactly with previous settings due to system changes. If you were using on-demand layout, it will likely work correctly.
  • We are working on restoring these, however, running this alpha will ignore your previous profiles for now.
• Triggers
• Widgets
• Live Mode

Known Issues

• We haven't localized the new strings yet.
• The menu bar item won't respond whilst we're indexing the bar, give it a sec and you can right click it again.
• Behaviour on a MacBook with a notch is not fully stable, but should behave roughly as expected on monitors.
  • We've tested this a lot on various MacBooks, but there's some odd behaviours with the new system overflow options.
• Some system items, especially those from Control Center widgets, cannot be hidden, but they can be moved.
• Hiding items from apps with multiple bar items will hide them all, as will showing them.
• Triggers are currently disabled, but will return in a future build.
• Only on-demand layout is currently enabled; Live Mode will return in a future build.
• The Shortcuts menu item will be labelled as "Control Center" and can't currently be moved.
• You may have to tap "Allow Access" twice on the onboarding prompt for screen capture permissions for it to work.
• Users with very large bar item counts may see some slowdown on the first run, but faster indexing after that.
• When your items are overflowing, it's possible that the menu item preview will show an incorrect image.
• It's possible for the menu items to drift slightly from the live layout - there's a temporary manual refresh button to handle this
• After moving enough items, the menu bar stops responding. This will likely be fixed in a future macOS beta, but we've got a "Restart Menu Bar" button to fix it in the imterim.