This clever Mac tool transforms your top menu bar in seconds – and gives you total control

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ZDNET key takeaways

• Bartender 6 is a great way to dramatically clean up your menu bar.
• This app gives you much more control over how the top bar behaves.
• Bartender 6 costs $20, but it’s worth its weight in tidying up the desktop.

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I reviewed Bartender 5 for MacOS some time ago and have been using it ever since. Since installing the app, I’ve found it to be a great addition to my desktop. Not only was it an easy way to get my top bar looking a bit more “nifty,” but it also cleaned it up.

After installing enough applications that included top bar icons, I found mine to be a bit too cluttered. Thankfully, Bartender 5 was able to hide those icons, allowing me to reveal them only when needed.

It’s both efficient and aesthetically pleasing.

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Well, when Apple released Tahoe and Liquid Glass, Bartender 5 didn’t exactly take advantage of the powerful new theme. With the MacOS changes in mind, the developer went back to work, retooling Bartender 5 into Bartender 6, and now it’s possible to make sure that the top bar is better suited to the new theme and gives you plenty of control over how it behaves.

Although the styling of the top bar is quite nice, it’s how well Bartender 6 cleans it up that really seals the deal for me.

Although the theming found in Bartender 6 doesn’t quite match that of Liquid Glass, it still makes the top bar (aka menu bar) look really cool. As far as the look is concerned, you can switch between:

• Standard
• Solid Color
• Gradient
• Glass
• Classic Bar

Each of the above will appeal to different user types, but for me, I vacillate between Gradient and Glass, depending on my desktop wallpaper.

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Yeah, I’m that kind of user.

As I said, the Glass theme doesn’t quite hit the Liquid Glass mark, but it’s close. Instead of it looking similar to the glassy dock and menus, it’s more of a frosted glass, so I guess it’s still in the glass family.

It still works.

I would like to see the developer get the top bar to look a bit closer to Apple’s take on glass. Maybe if they allowed users to change the color of the bar when in Glass mode, it would be possible to better match what’s on the bottom of the screen.

But that’s picking at nits.

Cleaning up that bar

If you’re not as into aesthetics as I am (most aren’t), then you’ll at least appreciate Bartender 6’s ability to clean up that bar.

Consider this: your top bar is filled with desktop icons, so much so that it’s become cluttered. What do you do?

You use Bartender 6.

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The app defaults to hiding menu bar icons, so most of what you see are the menus on the left side and the date/time on the right. In the app’s settings window (in the General section), you can define how to reveal those hidden icons.

I prefer the hover option simply because it saves me a click.

Once you get this configured exactly to your liking, you’ll find this feature alone is worth the price of entry ($20 one-time fee). Keeping a tidy menu bar removes the sense of clutter on my desktop (which is a big annoyance for me). A menu bar full of icons might not bother you, but with Bartender 6, there’s no way (at least not that I can find) to disable the feature.

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With regards to the hidden icons, you have two options:

• Reveal the hidden icons in the menu bar itself.
• Reveal the hidden icons in the Bartender Bar (which is a small bar that appears below the top bar when the hidden icons are revealed).

I set mine up so that all I have to do is hover my cursor over the menu bar, and the hidden icons appear in the Bartender Bar.

The choice is yours

I’m not saying that Bartender 6 will level up your MacOS skills. What I am saying is that with Bartender 6, you get to be in control of your menu bar, so you get to choose how it looks and behaves.

For me, Bartender has become a necessity for keeping that menu bar clean and looking fresh. If only the developer would allow me to customize the look so it better matches the dock and maybe make it possible to change the font size in the menu bar, this app would get a million chef’s kisses.

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Even so, Bartender 6 should be considered a must for anyone who wants to have choices for the customization of the top bar.