{"id":52042,"date":"2026-05-29T13:28:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T17:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=52042"},"modified":"2026-05-29T13:28:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T17:28:28","slug":"bartender-pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/29\/bartender-pro\/","title":{"rendered":"Bartender Pro"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\n

Bartender Pro includes everything in Bartender 6, plus Top Shelf and future Pro tools as they’re released.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

[Top Shelf is a] powerful new way to interact with your MacBook’s notch — bringing common utilities into what used to be wasted space.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Pro features require a new $15\/year subscription.<\/p>\n\n

Dan Moren<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Top Shelf is part Dynamic Island, part clipboard manager, part file utility. Frankly, much of it also feels like the kind of feature Apple should building itself, because my experience over the last year or two with the notch in the MacBook displays continually makes me annoyed at just how user-unfriendly it is.<\/p>\n

To trigger Top Shelf, you bring the cursor up to the notch; the interface expands outward from there, just like the Dynamic Island on the iPhone. By default, the first screen contains a pair of customizable widgets for common features like Calendar, Weather, and Music.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Files allows you to temporarily store, yes, files that you might want to move between apps. Drag and drop a file in there and then you can drag it back out of Top Shelf into another app. That pane also has an AirDrop section; drop a file there, and it will trigger the system’s AirDrop feature, with the file already pre-populated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

The Files feature sounds like Yoink<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

See also: MacRumors<\/a> and Mac Power Users Talk<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Ben Lovejoy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

However, there are also some truly remarkable [Apple] oversights which are somehow allowed to persist from macOS generation to macOS generation. […] menu items can end up being hidden behind the MacBook Pro notch, with Apple seemingly unaware or unconcerned about this. I typically only have four or five third-party menu bar items on screen at any given point (albeit including a wider timezone clock one), and yet it is still very common for one of them to end up invisible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n