6 Bartender Alternatives for Managing Your Mac Menu Bar

If you want to enjoy a clean and tidy Mac experience, you need to clear out and organize the menu bar. Among the popular tools, Bartender is a hot choice. However, considering that it was sold to another company last year, more and more Mac users are looking for alternatives to Bartender. Whether you want a smaller app or a free Mac bartender alternative, you can discover a more fantastic option here.

In this article, we’ll introduce 6 popular Bartender alternatives. Let’s take a look at their features and see how they can help you with your workflow and make the overall Mac experience better for you.

What Is the Bartender on Your Mac?

Bartender is a Mac app that you can use to get full control over your menu bar icons. It allows you to hide, reposition, and modify the icons of your menu bar. Thanks to Bartender, it’s easy for you to organize and keep your screen organized. It’s compatible with the latest macOS versions, such as Sequoia. You can use it for free for 4 weeks.

Key Features of Bartender

• Immediately access hidden menu bar items by swiping, scrolling, clicking, or hovering.
• Automatically hide the shown menu bar items to provide room for items.
• See hidden menu bar items in a secondary bar underneath the main menu bar.
• Customize the menu bar with colors, gradients, rounded corners, borders, shadows, and more.
• Cluster several menu bar items into one customizable item for better organization.

Limitations of Bartender

• Bartender 5 is only compatible with macOS Sequoia and Sonoma. It won’t work on older versions such as Ventura.
• Bartender 5 is not free. You can only enjoy the free trial for 4 weeks. After that, you need to purchase a license.
• There have been concerns about the new owner of Bartender. Users may worry that new codes may collect analytics data.

Top 6 Mac Bartender Alternatives Worth Trying

If you’ve used Bartender for a long period, it’s time to try other lightweight solutions. These Bartender alternatives can also fit your preferences and enhance your workflow. More than managing your menu bar, they may also provide other unique features and better integrate with other macOS settings.

Barbee

Barbee is a powerful and user-friendly Bartender alternative. It offers a set of features to help you organize your menu bar. Compared with Bartender, it has more customization and automatic options, This ensures that you have gained a personalized and efficient menu bar management experience. More importantly, Barbee runs offline, so it doesn’t collect any user data.

Key Features

• Easily hide unwanted icons to enhance focus.
• Change the look of your menu bar with options to round corners, add shadows, and customize the Apple logo.
• Set up rules to automatically hide or show icons based on specific apps or conditions.
• Quickly toggle off icons with custom shortcuts.
• Support for searching your menu bar items in a floating window like Spotlight.

Limitation

The search function is not that convenient.

Our Review

Barbee delivers a near-perfect experience for users seeking a simple yet effective menu bar utility. Its design combines elegance with practicality, making it approachable for beginners while still satisfying more seasoned users. The app’s ease of use stands out, thanks to its intuitive layout and quick setup process. Its affordability and flexible pricing structure make it an exceptional value, especially for those on a budget or looking for a Bartender alternative.

Vanilla

Vanilla is an excellent alternative to Bartender, especially for those looking for a simple, lightweight solution that doesn’t require extensive setup. Unlike Bartender, which can be more complex and resource-intensive, Vanilla offers a straightforward interface that allows users to quickly hide and organize menu bar icons with minimal fuss. You can enjoy the basic management features for free, while the Pro version adds useful features like keyboard shortcuts and auto-hide.

Key Features

• Easily hide icons by dragging them between hidden and visible sections.
• Works well with both light and dark menu bars.
• Set custom shortcuts to toggle the menu bar and desktop icons.
• Permanently remove icons from the menu bar.
• Automatically hide icons after five seconds.

Limitation

• The free version is quite basic. It only allows users to hide menu bar icons.

Our Review

Works great, went pro. I like it, although Big Sur helps—I really prefer having the option of both. And the last update fixed the minor glitches it had before. Great name, great icon, great app.

OnlySwitch

OnlySwitch also stands out as a multifunctional utility for managing your menu bar icons. Like Ice, it’s also a free and open-source solution. Despite managing your Mac menu bar, it’s also good for customizing various system settings.

Key Features

• Allows you to hide unwanted menu bar icons.
• You can add, remove, or rearrange switches to meet your requirements. It also supports keyboard shortcuts for easier operation.
• Offers a wide variety of toggle switch settings that can be customized for instant access to system features such as dark mode, MacBook notch hiding, silencing the microphone, etc.
• Supports Apple Widgets since 2.5.0, so you can keep your controls directly on the desktop.

Limitation

The extensive list of toggle switches and settings might be overwhelming for new users.

Our Review

OnlySwitch is a free (donations appreciated) and open-source application that makes it quick to change these and other options, while also allowing you to do things like hiding unwanted menu bar icons and keeping your Mac from going to sleep. Open OnlySwitch for the first time, and you'll see a new icon that's annoyingly close to the Control Center (don't worry, you can change it in the settings). Click this icon and you'll see all sorts of quick toggles, which you can quickly turn on and off.

Ice

Ice is a free and open-source alternative to Bartender. When it comes to managing the Mac menu bar, it offers a range of customization options such as adding borders, setting rounded corners, and tinting the menu bar. More than organizing your menu bar, it can also enhance the visual appearance of your desktop.

Key Features

• Hide, rearrange, and show items by hovering, clicking, scrolling, or swiping in the menu bar.
• Tint, add shadows, customize borders, and adjust menu bar shape.
• Toggle sections, show search, and enable or disable features with keyboard shortcuts.
• Launch at login, automatic updates, and menu bar widgets.

Limitation

As a more comprehensive tool, Ice might consume more system resources than some lightweight Bartender alternatives.

Our Review

It is a $0 free investment project. It's a great mining platform for all crypto enthusiasts. Great potential with upcoming everyday use cases. Join my team and get 10 FREE ICE coins.

iBar

iBar is another free Bartender alternative for managing your Mac menu bar. It allows you to hide menu bar icons. And then they can be revealed in a floating bar. This feature is particularly useful for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro users because it optimizes the use of space below the notch and keeps the menu bar tidy.

Key Features

• Hides menu bar icons, which can be revealed in a floating bar that extends below the notch on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models.
• Specially designed to integrate with the MacBook notch. Especially, it’s good for quick access to concealed icons without crowding the menu bar.

Limitation

There might be compatibility issues with certain apps or system updates.

Our Review

iBar is a free tool that hides menu bar icons, which can be revealed in a floating bar that extends below the notch on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. It’s a straightforward tool but doesn’t offer advanced features.

Hidden Bar

Hidden Bar is a free and lightweight alternative to Bartender. It allows you to drag a divider between icons in the menu bar to separate hidden and shown sections. This app includes features like launch at login, auto-hide durations, a show/hide global shortcut, and full menu bar mode.

Key Features

• Control icons in the menu bar by dragging them between categories.
• Open the app automatically when you log in to your MacBook.
• Set specific durations for how long icons should be hidden.
• Set keyboard shortcuts to quickly show or hide secret icons.
• Expand your menu bar to display all icons if you need.

Limitation

Although you can use it to hide menu bar icons, you cannot add spaces to group icons or set specific icons to reveal only when hovering over the menu bar.

Our Review

Much simpler than Bartender, but it's free and open source, so it does what it should, and you don't have to pay for it.

Bonus Tip: How to Free Up Storage Space on Mac

To gain a better experience when using your Mac, you should also frequently monitor and free up its storage space. To check your Mac system status in real time, you can install BuhoCleaner and open the menu bar monitor on your computer. This easy-to-use Mac cleaner also allows you to free up RAM, get more storage space, uninstall unwanted applications, and disable unnecessary login apps.

Here is how to use BuhoCleaner to free up the storage space on your Mac.

Step 1. Free install BuhoCleaner on your Mac.

Step 2. Launch the software and choose the Flash Clean mode from the left menu.

Step 3. View and delete the types of data you want to remove.

Conclusion

In summary, these 6 Bartender alternatives can give you a more impressive experience than Bartender when you need to enjoy a clean and organized workspace on your Mac. Apart from managing your menu bar, you’re also able to enjoy a range of customization settings to streamline your workflow. No matter whether you prefer a simple and clean interface or advanced customization functions, you will find one to meet your needs here.