Bartender 4
Surtees Studios has released Bartender 4 for macOS Big Sur, following extended testing in public beta. As well as macOS 11 support, the popular tool for rearranging or hiding Mac menu bar items now runs native on M1 Macs and comes with several new features and core abilities.
With Big Sur, Apple increased the space between menu bar items, which reduces the space available for icons. To alleviate this problem, Bartender 4 now allows users to revert to pre-Big Sur spacing or even use no spacing so to fit in more menu bar apps.
$15, with a 50% discount for upgrades.
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For users with lots of menu bar apps like me, Bartender had always been a very important helper for macOS. And after the Big Sur update with the extra icon padding in the menu bar, it has become the MVP. And aside from the padding issue, there are a lot of great new or improved features in v4. Bravo!
The new version is really polished and feature-rich. They could charge twice as much and it would still feel like a bargain.
Bartender 4 is great. For me Bartender (or similar tools) is a must-have for keeping the menu bar sane. A couple of month ago when I upgraded to Big Sur (because I bought an MBA M1) I was not happy when I first discovered that there were no officially released version of Bartender that supported the new OS. Fortunately the beta of Bartender 4 was already rock solid at that point and I've been using it ever since.
I do like the little extra features, like conditionally showing menu icons depending on changes in the icons themselves.
I did try the more narrow spacing but it didn't look great to be honest.