{"id":49533,"date":"2025-10-06T14:09:50","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T18:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=49533"},"modified":"2025-10-09T13:46:32","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T17:46:32","slug":"bartender-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/06\/bartender-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Bartender 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Applause Group<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We’ve re-built Bartender from the ground up to be beautiful, performant, and reliable. Bartender has been a staple of Mac users for years, and that brought with it lots of old hacks & tricks. We’ve modernised everything, from the algorithms used to move your items, through to the design of the entire app.<\/p><\/blockquote>

The design seems to have been inspired by System Settings.<\/p>

We’ve also brought our new movement system to Bartender 5, so you’ll get all the speed & reliability improvements for free on Sequoia. And yes, we’ve fixed the Apple menu bug.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

We’ve maintained a strict commitment to privacy throughout the new Bartender. We know that granting screen recording permissions can be intimidating, so we’ve maintained our policy of the app not sending anything anywhere. Your menu item images are stored in memory to show them in Bartender Bar or the layout screen, and they aren’t persisted. We’ve also reduced the amount of times Bartender has to capture the bar too, so you’ll see the purple dot even less. For people who don’t want this at all, you can re-arrange your items once, then disable screen recording permissions and use Bartender in a locked-down mode.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I saw lots of speculation<\/a> that after the acquisition it would switch to a subscription, but the new version is still a regular purchase at $20 ($12 for upgrades) vs. $16 ($8) for Bartender 5.<\/p>\n\n

Roustem Karimov<\/a> reports high energy use.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n