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The 34 Best Mac Menu Bar Apps

4 min read

✨ Unlock Your Mac’s Potential Top Menu Bar Apps

Is your Mac’s menu bar a crowded space of icons you barely use, or a streamlined control center boosting your productivity? 🤔 The Product Hunt community recently shared their absolute favorite macOS menu bar apps, uncovering gems that can seriously enhance your workflow.

Through their Ask Product Hunt feature, users nominated over 100 different utilities! We’ve sifted through the recommendations to bring you a curated list of standout apps that live right in your menu bar, offering quick access to powerful features.

🚀 Productivity & Workflow Enhancers

  • Bartender: Tidy up your menu bar by hiding less-used icons. 🧹
  • Alfred: Much more than a launcher; boosts efficiency with hotkeys, text expansion, workflows, and more. ⚡
  • Window Managers: Keep your workspace organized. Popular choices include:
    • Magnet: Simple window snapping to halves, thirds, or quarters.
    • Spectacle: (Note: No longer actively maintained, but still functional for many) Move and resize windows with keyboard shortcuts.
    • Moom: Powerful window management with presets and grid control.
    • Better Snap Tool: Customizable window snapping and resizing.
  • BetterTouchTool: Configure custom gestures for trackpad and other input devices, plus window snapping and more. 💪

⚙️ System & Utilities

  • Caffeine: Simple toggle to prevent your Mac from sleeping. ☕
  • f.lux: Adjusts screen color temperature based on the time of day for eye comfort. 🌙
  • iStat Menus: Monitor system resources (CPU, memory, network, etc.) directly from the menu bar. 📊
  • Tripmode: Control which apps can access the internet when on a limited connection (like mobile hotspots). 📶
  • CleanMyMac X: All-in-one tool for cleaning, optimizing, and maintaining your Mac. ✨ (Includes a menu bar component).
  • CleanMyDrive: Quickly eject external drives and clean junk files. 💾
  • Battery Indicator: Shows remaining battery time, often more useful than just the percentage. 🔋

🛠️ Development & Design Tools

  • Sip: A powerful color picker tool for grabbing, organizing, and sharing colors. 🎨
  • Dash: Instant offline access to API documentation sets. Essential for developers. 📚
  • Little Ipsum: Quickly generate placeholder text.
  • BitBar: (Now superseded by SwiftBar or xbar) Display output from any script or program in the menu bar. Highly customizable. 📈

📋 Clipboard & Snippet Managers

  • Paste: Smart clipboard history manager with search and organization features.
  • Jumpcut: Simple, open-source clipboard history access.

📸 Screen Capture & Annotation

⏰ Focus & Time Management

  • [Aware](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/aware/id4 Aware): Subtly tracks active computer usage time to encourage breaks. ⏳
  • Gestimer: Create quick reminders with a simple drag gesture from the menu bar.
  • RescueTime: Tracks time spent on apps and websites to analyze productivity. 📉
  • Escape: Monitors trips to distracting websites. 🚫

📅 Calendar & Organization

  • Itsycal: A tiny, convenient calendar display in the menu bar.
  • Fantastical: Powerful calendar app with natural language input and a menu bar component.

✨ Other Handy Tools

  • 1Password: Secure password manager with browser integration and a menu bar helper. 🔒
  • Noizio: Ambient background sounds (coffee shop, rain, etc.) for focus. 🎧
  • Rocket: Slack-style emoji picker accessible anywhere via a hotkey (often triggered from the menu bar). 😄
  • Kaomoji for Mac: Quick access to Japanese text emoticons ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
  • Hazel: Powerful file automation tool that runs in the background but is often configured/monitored via the menu bar. 🤖

Key Takeaways 📌

  • The Mac menu bar is prime real estate for quick-access utilities.
  • Community recommendations (like those from Product Hunt) are a great way to discover useful apps.
  • Tools range from system monitoring and window management to focus aids and developer resources.
  • Customizing your menu bar can significantly improve your daily workflow and productivity.

Related Resources 📚

What’s Your Go-To? 🤔

Which menu bar apps can you not live without? Share your essential picks in the comments below!

For more details and the full list of community recommendations, check out the original article on the Product Hunt blog:

Source: Product Hunt - The 34 Best Mac Menu Bar Apps (Published: 2018-03-23)

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