As I mentioned previously, some time ago, somewhere here, I often use an Alfred workflow to look for menu bar items, but the method is not totally reliable. Finbar is a dedicated solution that is billed as “Supercharged Menu Bar Search”. I have only just started to try it out, but I think it is worth mentioning here, not least because its support for scripting might be useful.
It makes a lot of sense - detecting the key press is much harder than knowing the keycode in advance.
Once again it’s interesting to get an expert Mac programmer’s perspective!
I recently switched to Barbee, as Bartender had an annoying bug that made the mouse pointer disappear or randomly activate the top-left apple menu.
It has a search feature, which I don't use, but it's a nicely designed app, so you might like it as an alternative to Finbar/Bartender in one.
I am a Beta tester for Barbee and know it quite well.
It does work well save for its Automations (i.e., Bartender's Trigger equivalent) which are buggy (as are Bartender's for that matter). There were changes made in Tahoe that both companies are struggling with.
That said, I prefer Barbee as it the developer is far more responsive.
Barbee seems to interfere with system-wide scrolling if you have it set to reveal items on hover. As long as it's set to reveal on click, it's fine. As you say, Tahoe seems to be the point of difference as I used Bartender for years without any trouble before updating the OS.
I do have problems on reveal on click in that i) the menu bar icons are in the wrong order and ii) the list is not complete. Do you not have this as well?
Come to think of it, I think so, yeah. I needed to run Amphetamine earlier and it wasn’t in the hidden items. I assumed it wasn't running but it’s more likely that the item wasn’t visible when clicked. I don’t think any of these apps are perfect. I’ll stick with Barbee for now.
Agree, they are all buggy compliments of Tahoe! I aim bothered that none of the apps share this information at the outset so that users know; especially when Automations / Triggers and hidden icons are core features (that do not fully work).
And this discussion is great support as to why I simply leave my menu bar items as they are :).
-rob.
Rob, as do I other than when travelling (because of the notch) and expose the menu bar items I regularly use.
The link appears to be broken, so cannot check to see what Finbar offers. As such, my comment might be irrelevant/misplaced!
That said, I am curious why one doesn’t simply make use of the built-in shortcut, to “Show Help Menu”? Under Settings/Keyboard/Keyboard Shortcuts/App Shortcuts, underneath the “All Applications” section, there is an option that can be selected, to “Show Help Menu”. I have it set to Shift+Command+</>.
When I invoke that, from anywhere in the system, the cursor is immediately placed in the Help Menu “search” field, of whichever app is currently active. From there, you can simply start typing the name of the menu item you want to invoke. You can then quickly scroll down to the specific item you want to invoke, and hit “enter”. That triggers the menu item.
I use this all the time, and allows me to hardly leave the keyboard, especially when invoking menus I often use. For instance, when opening a PDF from Safari in Preview, with a few keystrokes, I can “move” file into my specific folder that triggers Devonthink, to then import the file into a specific folder/group in Devonthink. But that is just one example, it obviously works across all apps.
Pretty sure most here know about this, but also saw this come up on Reddit, and cannot figure out what these apps offer that is not already built into the system? Does Finbar offer more than that—again, cannot get access via the link.
It's working for me, have another go.
It's the built-in menu search, but with the knob turned to 11 -- fuzzy filtering, you can set rules to exclude items you never use, you can include scripts that Finbar will show in the search as menu items (including scripts to trigger KM macros...), and more.
It’s necessary to scroll down even when enough characters have been typed for there to be a complete match. That’s not the case with the aforementioned menu bar search workflow for Alfred, or with Finbar. Also, the Apple method shows the menu item in context, which is sensible within the context of a “help” feature, but it is visual clutter otherwise.
You just reminded me that I had that Alfred workflow installed, and I can see your point on the Alfred workflow reducing the need to scroll (especially since it will learn what I frequently type in (for instance) Preview). I have now set the same shortcut to rather trigger the Alfred workflow first, and will see how it goes.
I have now found that, on occasions when the Alfred workflow fails to fetch data from the menu bar, Finbar also fails to do so, declaring that the relevant application is “busy”. Therefore it seems that both the workflow and the application are at the mercy of the same conditions; for my needs, Finbar is not therefore an improvement.
If you still want to try the application out—and why not—first try another browser! If that fails, perhaps there is a DNS issue, or maybe it’s just time to restart your Mac..?