TZGyn
92a57308b7
Hiding other apps' icons worked, but Apple pins Spotlight, Clock, Battery
and Control Center to the right of the menu bar, so a third-party item can
never be placed after them to push them away. Document the real limit so
the behaviour is not mistaken for a bug.
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92 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
92 lines
3.5 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 off by default and always undone on quit; if
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the app dies, macOS removes the spacer automatically.
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What it can and cannot hide:
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- It hides **other third-party apps' icons** (and can also catch some Apple
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items such as Wi-Fi).
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- It **cannot** hide **Spotlight, Clock, Battery, or Control Center**. macOS
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reserves the far right of the menu bar for those, and a third-party app cannot
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place its item to their right, so there is nothing to push them with. (This is
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the same limit Bartender and Ice hit; they cover the area with their own
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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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## 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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