SimpleTopBar

A native macOS menu bar app that shows a compact top bar with every app that is running on your Mac, split into two sections:

• 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.

Install with Homebrew

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.

Build from source

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 0.1.0        # release build + SimpleTopBar.app bundle + icon + codesign
./release.sh 0.1.0          # 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.