I had switched away from Bartender a while ago, mostly due to quirks on macOS 26, and partly due to confusion over its acquisition. But I’m back, and it’s better than ever.

First, a note about the acquisition: if you got nervous about things that happened immediately after, as far as I can tell it’s all been resolved (and was very quickly). They removed the Amplitude software (that was just being used to understand permission issues related to the certificate change), and they’ve increased transparency overall. I don’t see any reason not to use Bartender at this point.

On Bartender

If you’re not already familiar with Bartender and its ilk, it’s a way to tame your menu bar. It lets you move extra menu bar items to a secondary bar, hidden most of the time, but still easily accessible. For those of us who run a ton of utilities, it’s a huge help.

Bartender 6 also added groups, which allow you to have multiple secondary bars. For example, I have groups for “Network”, “Utilities”, “Keyboard” and “Disk”. Each group has 4-5 related menu bar items in it. On my MacBook Pro with a notch, I would never be able to see all of these at once.

You can also easily search your menu bar with a hotkey, allowing access to everything without any clicking at all.

Bartender Pro

In addition to bugfixes and refinements, the new Bartender Pro adds a notch dock (which I believe works with or without a notch) called Top Shelf. When you hover over your notch, you get a popover with various widgets like weather, now playing, and calendar. You can only display 2 widgets at a time, so you have to pick which ones are relevant.

In addition to the default widgets, you get a file shelf where you can collect files and then drag them elsewhere (with Airdrop), and a clipboard manager.

The Top Shelf also has status indicators, giving pleasant notifications when things like volume or screen brightness change, as well as battery notifications. It can even notify you about changes to chats with Claude Code or Codex, and give you meeting warnings with a “Click to join”.

You can assign keyboard shortcuts to reveal the Top Shelf, as well as to jump to any of its panels.

All in all this is a great update. The stability has been greatly improved, and features like the Top Shelf are meaningful updates. I recommend checking it out if your menu bar is getting crowded, or you’re a current user of something like Barbee or Ice.

Bartender Pro is available for $15/year. It includes Bartender 6, all future upgrades for the duration of your subscription, and the full Bartender Pro suite.

Since subscriptions aren’t for everyone, Bartender 6 will remain available for $20, and the Mega Supporter price still offers the same lifetime access it always has — with Bartender Pro included.

I’m not sure if Bartender Pro is coming to Setapp, but the older version remains available there.

For those who simply want menu bar management, you’ll still get the same updates, and the same features, with no requirement to subscribe. That feels like it covers all the bases — subscriptions that will help fund continued development, and one-time purchases to fit the needs of everyone else.

So check out Bartender Pro, I think you’ll dig it.