Perhaps this is of interest to someone
Latest update on from bartender on their blog..
https://www.macbartender.com/Bartender5/blog/
Some alternatives
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Very bad buzz. I could be wrong, but I think the damage has been done and trust has been broken for good.
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Very disheartening news. Uninstalled it last night after reading this post. I have given up trust in most third-party apps on my Mac in favor of Apple apps. The single exception I've made is for Keyboard Maestro as it is an integral part of so much automation on my machine. J
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I paid for Bartender5 awhile back and really wished I had looked into the free apps. I never used any of the fancier Bartender features so it was overkill. I uninstalled Bartender and installed Ice. It works well and is really easy to configure.
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One of Bartender's features which seems to be lacking from the free alternatives is the ability to open a menu bar app directly. Here is a tried and trusted way to do that in Applescript, using Amphetamine.app as the example.
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Amphetamine"
click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2
end tell
For some applications, you may need to change "menu bar 2" to "menu bar 1".
To run this in Keyboard Maestro, create a macro which uses the Execute AppleScript action.
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Thanks for posting this, I have been frustrated with permissions resetting on bartender, but had not thought anything of it because I trusted them as a known quantity. I uninstalled it. What a bad move.
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I lucked out. I’m using Bartender from SetApp and was wondering why I didn’t see any phone-home requests via Little Snitch. I looked at the SetApp description for Bartender and saw this
Important: Bartender 5 is only compatible with** macOS Sonoma**. Because of internal changes in macOS, Bartender 5 could only be designed to work with the newest version of macOS
My decrepit Intel machines on much earlier OS versions 
. I’m wondering if any other Little Snitch users have seen network activity from Bartender.
I'm not sure what you are wondering about. The results should depend purely upon which version of Bartender anyone is using. Setapp is not a factor, if that's what was on your mind.
Until I removed the application just the other day, I was still running V. 4 (because, for my software needs, I am not yet confident that I should update to Sonoma) and of course that version was not affected by the changes in V. 5. I removed the application anyway simply because I no longer had any unique use for it.
I was just wondering if any nefarious behavior from V5 could be mitigated with a network sandbox using Little Snitch.
I am a sucker for a good apology. I believe them when they say they're removing Amplitude (it's verifiable, so their reputation is on the line if they leave it in). I'm sticking w/Bartender. It sounds like 'widgets' might be a better version of 'bitbar', so we'll see.
More concerning to me would be the acquiring company's history of transitioning to subscription-only pricing. But time will tell.
-rob.
I'll keep using it as long as it's available via Setapp.
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I reverted back to Bartender 5.0.49 (though some people say Bartender 5.0.48 is the safer choice) because that was the last version before the new owner. Plus I'm using Little Snitch to block apps from phoning home.
I haven't had any problems so I'm going to keep sticking with it for now, since none of the alternatives seem to be able to reproduce the show "hidden" icons as a "second row" feature.
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I did the same but then switched to 5.0.48; from memory, 5.049 was released after the domain ownership changed according to the WHOIS data, even though it still had the same signing entity.
Planning to keep it (network blocked by Lulu) until a better alternative with notch bar handling reaches consensus, I wasn't a power user of the deeper features but none of the alternatives are there yet. I haven't seen any reason to be too concerned about this setup until Sequoia.
I wish I had 5.0.48. The closest copy I had, before 5.0.49 was 5.0.44.
I noticed today they released 5.0.53. Theoretically complying with their promise of privacy -no snooping- and transparency. I'm not savy enough to be able to sandbox and check. The truth is, from one minute to the next I have lost trust and have trouble figuring out what would gain trust back short of proper code scrutiny by those who know more than I... and are known for high ethical standards (I hold in high regard many who post in this forum, they have transparency in common). Cheers
You can download older versions directly from their website. It's a bit tricky to find, but here's the direct link: Bartender 5 - Release Notes
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Thanks.. And also thank you for the Little Snitch tip, I wasn't aware of it (I hope they offer discounts soon).
Hi, @Teto. Little Snitch is great, but you might want to also consider LuLu.
My current position is to continue to use the version of Bartender included in my Setapp subscription, but also use LuLu to monitor (just in case).
My hope is that this was just a clumsy transition but there was really no ill will intended. Yes, I choose to look for the pony. 
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Looking into Lulu (learning about it). I'm not against paying for Little Snitch but at this point I'm totally unfamiliar with either. Thanks for the recommendations.