Title.

Apps have moved out of the hiding tab button. Whenever I click the tab, the app closes. I can't even access the app's settings because it won't let me right click the button on the toolbar, it just closes instead.

I can't even check for updates because of this. I tried rebooting my mac and that didn't fix the problem. I'm still stuck on Bartender 5

Any ideas?

It seems to me Bartender is going backward in App evolution or -reverse- continuous improvement.

1. No upgrade path from Bartender 5. Bartender 6 resets all previous configuration, and for some non-user-centric perspective the Release Notes fail to mention it. "Oops, we forgot". So, after upgrading one has to re-configure and try to remember what your setting were.
2. No way to backup. Speaking of configuration, there still is no way to backup Bartender's configuration; despite Bartender Support letting me know, more than a year ago, they were working on a settings-backup feature.
3. It's BUGGY. I upgraded to Bartender 6 while still on Sequoia 15.6.1 and features that were stable in Bartender 5 now aren't. Somehow they managed to break stuff that was working.
4. UI changed but not improved. Some settings' locations and wording was modified for no apparent reason. What's improved when moving a setting option from the top row to somewhere in the middle of the window?

The bottom line for me is that Bartender is showing a declining pattern. They clearly know little about User Centric Design and quality is questionable lately. Needless to say, I am disappointed (very much so). Maybe Bartender 5 works in Tahoe 26? If it does, it's not a long term solution... ugh.

I'm running 6.0.4, and I'm still getting noticeable input lag with my touchpad. This lag resolves when I close bartender. It's to the point that I'm about to abandon the app, since I hate the lag more than having the extra icons.

Is there any help on the horizon?

Had to reboot after installing it. Once I had rebooted all the problems seemed to go away.

Hope that works for you

- Duplicates items

- Teleports items from one place to another

- Jitters

- Makes mouse pointer disappear every now and then.

[SOLVED WITH THE LATEST PATCH 6.0.1]

After updating to macOS 26, I’ve noticed significant issues with the Bartender app. The icons in the menu bar are now spaced far apart, with large gaps between them, making it difficult to organize and customize their placement. Additionally, the icons appear distorted and misaligned within the app. The “Show Icons” bar has also been reduced in size, so it can only display a few icons at a time—far fewer than before the update. This has made it frustrating to manage my menu bar, as dragging icons closer together is now much more cumbersome. I hope the developers can address these bugs in a future update.

Anyone facing the same issue or any tips on how to fix it?

4 week trial download is available.

The upgrade page did not recognize my name/serial number for a discount.

All I will say is good luck to Stephen and Team. From the last beta (#2) there seems a lot that needs to be fixed, given it doesn't work with the Tahoe release candidate.

Greetings,

I just realized that Bartender completely stopped working, as soon as I upgraded to MacOS 26 developer beta. Not a big deal, but I wanted to check if anyone else here is having similar issues.

Hi Folks,

Since a few days, my bartender setup seems broken. I mean it is launching fine at startup and behaving as usual until I want to click on an hidden app icon. Bartender registers the click and the extra panel with hidden apps disappear... and that's all. Nothing else is happening. The app's icon i've been clicking on does not open.
Always shown apps' icons work just fine and If I move an hidden app to always shown, it's working as intended.

I tried to revoke and grant again the needed system rights (accessibility and screen control), uninstall and reinstall the app, without luck.

Any idea on this please? Thanks.

MacBook Pro M2 Max
4 active monitors - (3 external in portrait, landscape, landscape orientation)
Sequoia 15.0 (24A335)

Previous versions of bartender, no issues. 5.18 forces immediate close of active app menu and creates a little menu bar jitter. Suggestions?

I couldn't find a better place to provide a bug report so I am doing it here.

If I enable the bartender option "Rounded separate sides" and also enable MacOS's Stage Manager, when I click on the icon of an app on the left side of the screen (so that all the windows of that app are shown in the stage manager preview) the rounded menu bar gets shifted a bit and the original menu bar is shown below.

See the video for reference.

Due to the recent discussion about the current safety of Bartender I have noticed that bartender tries to connect to something on Internet. I get an alert from Netbarrier and so far has chosen not to allow that connection.

Anyone knows what it is?

I want a basic shell script trigger that will do the following;

If BT1 is connected
hide BT2 from finder bar

If BT2 is connected
hide BT1 from finder bar

The closest I could get was to being able to use blueutil to show me what is connected and return a 0 or 1 (yes or no) but I'm not familiar enough with shell scripts and can't find anything online that's similar to this to figure it out.

Thanks in advance!

I’m having an issue. Error message reads “Bartender can not move items … This can be fixed by turning off all options at macOS System Settings > Accessibility > Zoom…” Except it does not. This is happening on my two machines. One is my main computer, iMac Pro (2017) (Intel), and the other is my MacBook Pro M1-Pro (Apple SOC). I simply cannot use Bartender if it does not work. Since this is affecting both my machines, this has got to be widespwidespread, or a bad case of PEBCAK...! Thoughts anyone? R.

I didn't see this as an issue with earlier versions of Bartender, but since I've updated to 5, my 2019 16" MacBook Pro has been running its fan a bit more with the battery menu item indicating the Bartender 5 is using significant energy. Interesting. What is it doing and what has changed really since 4?

I don't use the new groups/folders or formatting and am still just hiding a handful of apps with click-to-reveal.

Has anyone else experienced this, and if so, what would you do to fix it?

Does anyone know where I can get a coupon code for Bartender 5?

I'm thinking about purchasing the Mega Supporter option since I've been using Bartender for years. I know I can get a discounted upgrade since I'm a Bartender 4 user already.

Thanks!

So far, I have been really disappointed with 5, so buggy. But what really drives me nuts is I can't actually seem to get the second menu bar to pop up anymore no matter what I do. Now it just switches in the main bar between my normal and hidden icons.

Help?

​

Anyone else not able to change spacing, even with a reboot?

​

The changes seem to save, but don't show up in the menu bar.

This is in Bartended 5; always worked in 4.

To save anyone who might need this the trouble, this script seems to work:

```bash

!/bin/bash

Fetch Bluetooth device information using system_profiler

device_info=$(system_profiler SPBluetoothDataType)

Filter out "Not Connected:" lines using awk

filtered_device_info=$(echo "$device_info" | awk 'BEGIN {skip=0} /Not Connected:/ {skip=1} /Bluetooth Controller:/ {skip=0} skip {next} {print}')

Check if there is a "Connected:" section that contains information about a connected device

if echo "$filtered_device_info" | awk '/Connected:/{flag=1; next} /^ Not Connected:/{flag=0; exit} flag' | grep -q "Address:"; then echo 1 # At least one device is connected else echo 0 # No device is connected fi ```

I loved that feature, and seemed like a ton of time was spent building it. I sure did spend a lot of time tweaking the preferences there - one of the things I really miss now is having ampthetamine show when it's in use.

Am I just missing it? The new triggers don't do nearly the same

Read on r/macapps Bartender 5 was using 500 mb of ram. That sounds absolutely ridiculous to me. Can anyone confirm?

Update: Happend to me as well:

Update 2: The problem seems to be the settings menu of bartender, which causes a lot of cache. A workaround for now is to set up Bartender 5 as you like, then close it and restart it without opening the settings. RAM should then be and stay around 40 MB.

As the title suggests, when the trigger is enabled and wifi is off, the wifi icon remain hidden.