TZGyn
dec8d60aa3
The point of the app is a single hamburger that replaces the tray, so
hiding the other icons should be the out-of-the-box state. Remember the
user's choice, and create the hamburger before the hider so it is not
itself pushed off-screen.
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97 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
97 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
# SimpleTopBar
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A native macOS menu bar app: a **hamburger menu** in the menu bar whose panel
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collects every other app's menu bar (tray) icons, plus every app running on your
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Mac, into three sections:
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- **Menu Bar** — a tray of all other apps' menu bar items, discovered through
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the Accessibility API. Click one to open its real menu. Optionally **hide the
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items from the menu bar** so they only live inside this panel (best-effort;
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see below).
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- **Apps** — regular apps that live in the Dock.
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- **Background Apps** — accessory/agent apps without a Dock icon. This section
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is a **dropdown**: it stays collapsed to a single header, and when you expand
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it only the first few apps are shown. The rest are hidden behind a
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**Show N more** row so the list never overflows the panel.
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Click any row to activate the app, or right-click for Activate / Hide / Quit.
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## Accessibility permission
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Collecting and opening other apps' menu bar items needs **Accessibility**
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permission (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility). The panel
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prompts for it; without it the Menu Bar section is empty and everything else
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still works.
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## Hiding menu bar items (best-effort)
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macOS has no public API to move another app's status item. The **Hide items from
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the menu bar** toggle uses the spacer technique: a zero-width status item is
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created at launch whose length is expanded to push the other icons off-screen so
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they only live in this panel. It is **on by default** (the choice is
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remembered), always undone on quit, and if the app dies macOS removes the spacer
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automatically.
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What it can and cannot hide:
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- It hides **other third-party apps' icons** (cmux, Kapture, WireGuard, input
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source, Now Playing, …) so only your apps' icons leave the bar.
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- It **keeps Wi-Fi, Spotlight, Clock, Battery and Control Center**. The spacer's
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boundary is tuned (preferred position 250) to fall just left of Wi-Fi, so the
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Apple items on the right stay visible. macOS reserves that far-right area: a
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third-party item can never be placed to the right of it, so those icons cannot
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be pushed away even in principle. (Bartender and Ice hit the same wall and
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cover the area with their own overlay bar instead.)
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- Newly launched apps are placed to the left of the spacer, so they are hidden
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automatically.
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- Advanced: set `defaults write dev.tzgyn.simpletopbar debug.spacerPos -float <n>`
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to move the boundary (larger = keep more icons; > ~400 starts leaking app
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icons back into the bar).
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## Install with Homebrew
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```bash
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brew tap TZGyn/tap https://gitea.tzgyn.dev/TZGyn/homebrew-tap.git
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brew trust TZGyn/tap
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brew install --cask simpletopbar
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```
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The tap is hosted on Gitea, so the full URL is required. Homebrew may print an
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"Unsupported tap" warning — it's harmless.
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## Upgrade
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```bash
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brew update
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brew upgrade --cask simpletopbar
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```
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If Gatekeeper still blocks the app after upgrading (it is not notarized yet):
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```bash
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xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/SimpleTopBar.app
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```
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## Build from source
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```bash
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swift build # debug build
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swift run SimpleTopBar # run from terminal (app appears in the menu bar)
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swift run SimpleTopBar --self-test # headless check of the dropdown logic
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./build-app.sh 0.2.0 # release build + SimpleTopBar.app bundle + icon + codesign
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./release.sh 0.2.0 # build-app.sh + dist/SimpleTopBar.zip + sha256
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```
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## Around the Background dropdown
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The background section is collapsed by default. Expanding it reveals
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`AppListModel.backgroundPageSize` (5) apps at a time; when more are running a
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**Show N more** button reveals the next page. Collapsing resets the page.
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## Releases
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`./release.sh <version>` builds and zips the app to `dist/SimpleTopBar.zip` and
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prints its sha256. Tag `v<version>`, attach the zip to a release on the Gitea
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repo, and bump `version`/`sha256` in the cask in
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[TZGyn/homebrew-tap](https://gitea.tzgyn.dev/TZGyn/homebrew-tap).
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