I'm posting this because I have received multiple related requests due to the current Bartender controversy (PSA: Bartender Mac App Under New Ownership, But Lack of Transparency Raises Concerns - MacRumors)
Manage Menubar Status Items using BTT.
Starting with BetterTouchTool 4.615 you can manage your menubar's status items via BTT.
There are a few base features that make this possible:
-
The predefined action "Move Menu Bar Status Item To New Position"
-
The predefined action "Hide Menu Bar Icons Left Of Specific Icon"
-
A "Menubar Status Item" Widget that can be placed in a Floating Menu
-
The predefined action "Search Menu Bar Status Items"
Example Preset
Here is a ready to use preset that shows how these features work toghether:
sequoia_status_item_bar2.bttpreset (90.2 KB)
This will add a chevron-left item to your menubar that allows you to hide all items left of it. Also it will show a bar containing all items when your mouse hovers the top right area of your menubar.
Configuring the Status Item Bar
By default this preset shows a floating bar with all of your menubar status items when you move your mouse to the top right edge of your screen. This bar is configured in the "Custom Floating Menus" section in BTT:
You can change the appearance of the whole bar or of individual items. You can also hide items from the bar (press cmd+d to hide the selected item)
Configuring Which Status Items To Hide From The BTT bar
Hiding items you don't want to have constantly visible is done via the predefined action "Hide Menu Bar Icons Left Of Specific Icon". This action can be assigned to any trigger in BTT, for example you could assign it to a keyboard shortcut.
The preset shared above assigns this action to a custom menubar status item and configures the action to hide any item left of that item itself.
Once you import the preset an item with this symbol will appear in your menubar: ❮
When clicking this item, it will hide any item that is positioned left of it.
Of course you can cmd+drag this item to the position you want and thereby influence which items in your menubar will be hidden.
Configuring Which Status Items To Hide From The Real Menu Bar
You can drag items above the "always hidden" section in the BTT UI, then they will always be hidden from the main menubar. (watch the short video above)
Quick Access For Menu Bar Status Items Via Predefined Action "Search Menu Bar Status Items"
Spacing
3.) To reduce the spacing of items in the menubar you don't need an app. Just run these terminal commands
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 6
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 6
killall ControlCenter
Feature Requests
Please post any feature requests for status item management here. I think I have implemented all the basics and should be quick to add remaining required features.
I‘ll ping the dato dev about it
