Bartender controversy, tutorial on how to manage menubar status items via BTT

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"

  • Custom Menu Bar Status Items

  • 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:

status_item_bar

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)

status_item_bar

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.

custom_status_bar_item

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"

Search Menubar Status Items 1

Search Menu Bar Status Items 2

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.

409 posts were merged into an existing topic: Bartender Archived

20 votes have been moved.

I have archived the previous replies in this topic as most of them were outdated.

I have just updated the example preset (90.2 KB)
in the initial post and uploaded a new build of BTT (5.172 ) which should resolve a few things.

4 Likes

I downloaded the example preset and it seems to break menubar items for CrossOver programs. How can I fully disable it? I tried deleting everything in the floating bar categroy but that doesn't seem to get things back to normal with CrossOver icons and BTT running at the same time.

Figured it out, deleted these too and now my CrossOver Menubar / Windows Tray icons are back to working as normal.

why cant it change the icon in original menubar? ....is it possible to do that?

How to revert on the preset which removes all menubar icons, i imported it and after deletion the change is still present.