# SimpleTopBar

A native macOS menu bar app: a **hamburger menu** in the menu bar whose panel
collects every other app's menu bar (tray) icons, plus every app running on your
Mac, into three sections:

- **Menu Bar** — a tray of all other apps' menu bar items, discovered through
  the Accessibility API. Click one to open its real menu. Optionally **hide the
  items from the menu bar** so they only live inside this panel (best-effort;
  see below).
- **Apps** — regular apps that live in the Dock.
- **Background Apps** — accessory/agent apps without a Dock icon. This section
  is a **dropdown**: it stays collapsed to a single header, and when you expand
  it only the first few apps are shown. The rest are hidden behind a
  **Show N more** row so the list never overflows the panel.

Click any row to activate the app, or right-click for Activate / Hide / Quit.

## Accessibility permission

Collecting and opening other apps' menu bar items needs **Accessibility**
permission (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility). The panel
prompts for it; without it the Menu Bar section is empty and everything else
still works.

## Hiding menu bar items (best-effort)

macOS has no public API to move another app's status item. The **Hide items from
the menu bar** toggle uses the spacer technique: a zero-width status item is
created at launch whose length is expanded to push the other icons off-screen so
they only live in this panel. It is off by default and always undone on quit; if
the app dies, macOS removes the spacer automatically.

What it can and cannot hide:

- It hides **other third-party apps' icons** (and can also catch some Apple
  items such as Wi-Fi).
- It **cannot** hide **Spotlight, Clock, Battery, or Control Center**. macOS
  reserves the far right of the menu bar for those, and a third-party app cannot
  place its item to their right, so there is nothing to push them with. (This is
  the same limit Bartender and Ice hit; they cover the area with their own
  overlay bar instead.)
- Newly launched apps are placed to the left of the spacer, so they are hidden
  automatically.

## Install with Homebrew

```bash
brew tap TZGyn/tap https://gitea.tzgyn.dev/TZGyn/homebrew-tap.git
brew trust TZGyn/tap
brew install --cask simpletopbar
```

The tap is hosted on Gitea, so the full URL is required. Homebrew may print an
"Unsupported tap" warning — it's harmless.

## Upgrade

```bash
brew update
brew upgrade --cask simpletopbar
```

If Gatekeeper still blocks the app after upgrading (it is not notarized yet):

```bash
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/SimpleTopBar.app
```

## Build from source

```bash
swift build                 # debug build
swift run SimpleTopBar      # run from terminal (app appears in the menu bar)
swift run SimpleTopBar --self-test   # headless check of the dropdown logic
./build-app.sh 0.2.0        # release build + SimpleTopBar.app bundle + icon + codesign
./release.sh 0.2.0          # build-app.sh + dist/SimpleTopBar.zip + sha256
```

## Around the Background dropdown

The background section is collapsed by default. Expanding it reveals
`AppListModel.backgroundPageSize` (5) apps at a time; when more are running a
**Show N more** button reveals the next page. Collapsing resets the page.

## Releases

`./release.sh <version>` builds and zips the app to `dist/SimpleTopBar.zip` and
prints its sha256. Tag `v<version>`, attach the zip to a release on the Gitea
repo, and bump `version`/`sha256` in the cask in
[TZGyn/homebrew-tap](https://gitea.tzgyn.dev/TZGyn/homebrew-tap).