When I switched to macOS I treated adding icons to the Menu Bar as a sport, regarding the addition of each icon as a badge of honour. At one stage my collection stretched over halfway across my 27" screen.

What can I say? I was young and impressionable! 🤣

It didn't take long before I came to my senses and, given how little control Apple provided, I began the search for a way to take back control of my virtual desktop.

For 6 years it was a battle royal between me and all the apps that wanted to add their icon to my sacred space in the Menu Bar.

If an app's Menu Bar icon was nothing more than a vanity addition the decision was easy ... it was gone. The difficultly was making a decision where the Menu Bar icon provided access to features. It felt like I was constantly trading cognitive overload, not to mention sanity, for functionality.

That was when Bartender arrived, my white knight, providing the best of all worlds.

Bartender gives you superpowers when it comes to managing your Menu Bar.

Bartender has 3 categories into which you can place Menu Bar icons:

Shown All the Time

You love them, you use them, you want to see them ... all the time!

Hidden Icons

Icons you use but don't need to see all the time. Bartender hides them but a single click displays them when required.

Always Hidden Icons

Icons you never really use but the host apps insist are there and maybe you access once a year!

Version 4 of Bartender added the option to create a shortcut key to search all the Menu Bar icons, hidden or otherwise. It's like Alfred but specifically for Menu Bar items.

It's genius!

It's what allows me to hide all of them, summonsing them only when required. That displays the summonsed icon for 30 seconds before fading it back into the background again.