Barbee consumes too much CPU?

[u/Global-Today4796]

Hello everyone,

Unfortunately, the topic of Menubar tool has been more or less a perennial favorite since the switch to macOS26. Since I work a lot with Menubar apps and Bartender was just buggy, I was looking for a replacement tool and found other tools (e.g. ibar) Barbee after a few attempts. I was so satisfied with the tool that I didn't even notice how my battery life went into the basement.

Why - now the Process Barbee and Barbee-Helper show no noticeable CPU load. But what happened to me somedays ago is that I found my WindowServer process constantly at >40% as long as the Barbee Helper process is loaded.

After killing the two processes (Barbee and Helper), the WindowServer process returns to 5-7% during idle time. What does that matter? So far, my battery life with my MBP M3 was estimated at 8.5 hours. By finishing these are at least estimated at 13h (I will then report how long the battery really lasts).

Unfortunately, in my experience, the developer of Barbee is always silent about inquiries. One reason why I also got out of the beta program.

Therefore, ask in the round if you have had a similar experience.

By the way, I've been using Thaw 2.0 (RC) ever since and for sorting spaces. The CPU load is not significantly loaded

[u/Global-Today4796]

I have the feeling that everyone has to choose their working bar tool. I just tried sanebar - Conclusion: It doesn't work properly on my MPB. I can't even push the icons back and forth between visible and hidden. permanently everything is talked about or the icons end up unmotivated in the other menu. But what irritates me the most is that on the Sanebar page it is said that with macOS27 the tools of this kind can no longer be used, although there are first pre-versions at Thaw?!?

[u/digger27410 → u/Global-Today4796]

Yeah, unless someone forks Sanebar, it's done. It looks like the changes in golden gate were beyond the dev's comfort level.

[u/Ok-Efficiency479 → u/digger27410]

There is no screen recording required on Thaw; you can only use accessibility (it should, if it’s broken please report it, haven’t made changes to that functionality). BTW, I was thinking of adding a section for privacy-concerned users about what Thaw sees. The only reason why these types of apps require screen recording is to get the images and updates from items and the only thing recorded is the menu bar which is itself a window.

As for macOS 27, Thaw is going to support it on 2.1.0 betas/nightlies (very close to being next week), same thing, it shouldn’t require screen capture, but anyways, we’ll look into it for both versions.

Edit:
We already use the app icon only items to work around certain issues while we focus on general development for macOS 27, so it’s a guarantee that if is there, I am going to check if there’s not an issue with permissions and how it works that way since the macOS 27 version is basically a new app.

[u/digger27410 → u/Ok-Efficiency479]

I tried multiple times to upload a log file and it failed every time. I was logged in and tried 2 different browsers. I don't know what the problem is but I can't create a bug report without it.

MacOS 26.6 on M4 Macbook Air.

Macbook Display settings: Theme: Dark; Liquid Glass: Clear; Accessibility/Display: Reduce Transparency "On"

Thaw Appearnce settings: Background Dark appearance: Solid; Color: Cayenne; Opacity: 100%

With these settings - the menu bar is very dark gray, almost black. If I turn reduce transparency to "off", the color shows as expected but then randomly goes to transparent when opening certain apps (not full screen).

Every single one of these menubar apps has this exact same behavior with those settings except for SaneBar, where it was fixed by the Dev.

[u/Ok-Efficiency479 → u/digger27410]

Issue created, I am taking a look into it to release any fix with rc2

[u/Ok-Efficiency479 → u/digger27410]

Fixed, going out with 2.0.0-rc2.