Bartender 5: Organize and Customize Your Mac Menu Bar Like a Pro

We all know the struggle—your Mac’s menu bar gets cluttered with too many icons, making it hard to find what you need quickly. That’s where Bartender 5 comes in, the essential menu bar utility for macOS Sonoma and Sequoia that helps you take control of your menu bar icons with style and precision.

What is Bartender 5?

Bartender 5 is a powerful tool designed to declutter your Mac’s menu bar, allowing you to organize and customize it exactly how you want. Whether you’re a minimalist or someone who likes quick access to multiple apps, Bartender 5 helps you streamline your workflow by giving you full control over which icons are visible and when.

From showing icons only when you need them to hiding less important ones, this utility is perfect for anyone who finds their menu bar getting out of hand.

Key features

• Menu Bar Item Groups: Combine multiple items into one customizable menu bar item. For example, group all your cloud storage apps like Dropbox and Google Drive for quick access.
• Quick Access: Reveal hidden items by clicking in an empty space on the menu bar or using keyboard shortcuts. You can also set hotkeys for instant access to specific items.
• Triggers: Automatically show or hide menu bar items based on conditions such as time of day, Wi-Fi network, or specific applications in use.
• Custom Styling: Personalize your menu bar with various styling options, including colors, borders, and shapes. Make it uniquely yours!
• Real-Time Updates: Bartender 5 runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, ensuring lightning-fast performance.

TheSweetBits review

As a long-time user of Bartender, we’ve highlighted it as a must-have macOS app. With Bartender 5, the tool has reached new heights, offering more powerful features to manage your menu bar effectively.

First impressions

At first glance, Bartender 5 retains its hallmark functionality. It’s still the go-to tool for managing macOS menu bars. You can hide less-used icons and declutter your workspace, which is invaluable for anyone who finds a crowded menu bar distracting.

New customization options, like Smart Triggers, make it easier than ever to manage icons. For example, you can set specific triggers for when icons should appear or hide based on app activity, adding flexibility that macOS lacks natively.

However, note that Bartender 5 is exclusive to macOS Sonoma or later, meaning older macOS versions won’t support it. The app is also optimized for Apple Silicon Macs, delivering a snappier, more fluid experience for M1, M2, and M3 users.

Smart and flexible Iicon control

Bartender 5 introduces Advanced Triggers that let you control when specific icons appear or disappear based on system conditions or app activity. For example, you can set a trigger to display an icon only when the associated app is active or when an update becomes available. This “smart reveal” feature means your menu bar only shows what’s relevant to you at any given moment.

Additionally, Smart Search allows you to find and access hidden icons quickly, especially useful when managing a lot of applications. Just start typing in Bartender’s search box, and the hidden icons will appear instantly.

Bartender bar for quick access

The Bartender Bar adds a new dimension to menu bar organization. When enabled, it creates a secondary menu bar that remains hidden until you hover over it or invoke it with a keyboard shortcut. This allows you to move less frequently used icons to this bar, keeping your main menu bar clean while still making all icons easily accessible when needed.

For example, you can push lesser-used apps (like time trackers or file syncing tools) into the Bartender Bar, keeping high-priority apps like battery status or VPNs on your main menu bar.

Menu bar spacing for a sleeker look

Bartender 5 introduces Smart Spacing, allowing you to control and adjust the space between icons. This adds more customization over how your menu bar looks and feels, which is a small but welcomed feature, particularly for those who want a minimal and polished appearance. If you’ve ever been annoyed by uneven or inconsistent icon spacing, this feature is a game-changer.

Quick reveal and consistent notifications

Another standout feature is Quick Reveal, which lets you instantly show all hidden menu bar items with a single click or shortcut. This is perfect when you want to quickly check on hidden system services or running apps without constantly toggling icons on and off. Once you’ve seen what you need, you can hide them just as easily.

Additionally, Bartender 5 ensures that you won’t miss any important app notifications, even if their icons are hidden. By using the app’s Notification Center integration, Bartender will display a subtle alert when a hidden app needs your attention. This guarantees you’re always in the loop without the constant visual clutter of too many icons.

Custom hotkeys and full keyboard navigation

Bartender 5 offers full keyboard navigation, allowing you to interact with the app entirely without a mouse. This includes custom hotkey shortcuts for quickly revealing or hiding icons, accessing the Bartender Bar, or triggering specific icons based on your needs. Power users will love the ability to fully control their menu bar experience with just a few taps on the keyboard, making multitasking even more efficient.

Privacy and security

Bartender continues to uphold strong privacy standards. It only interacts with the icons you allow it to manage, and no data is collected or shared. You can rest assured that using Bartender won’t affect your system’s privacy or security settings in any way. In fact, by helping you hide certain sensitive icons (such as screen recorders or VPNs), it can actually enhance your privacy by keeping those tools out of sight from prying eyes.

Our experience with Bartender 5

Having used Bartender 5 for a while now, we can confidently say it’s a solid evolution of its predecessor. Coming from Bartender 4, we immediately noticed the smoother and more responsive performance, especially on our Mac running macOS Sonoma. The speed and fluidity are remarkable, and everything from menu bar transitions to icon management feels snappier, thanks to Apple Silicon optimizations.

The customizable triggers and rules remain as flexible as ever. For instance, we love that we can choose when certain icons should appear or hide depending on our workflow. It’s effortless to keep our menu bar decluttered, which helps us stay focused, especially when working on my MacBook’s built-in display where space is limited. Bartender 5 truly shines when we’re using a secondary monitor, where it takes advantage of the extra real estate without compromising usability.

One of our favorite features is the Bartender Bar—it’s been refined in version 5, and now switching between hidden icons is quicker. We also appreciate the added Quick Reveal feature, which allows us to bring up specific icons with a simple key press. It’s a game changer when you need quick access to something without losing focus on your work.

Compared to Bartender 4, the experience with version 5 feels more polished. While the core features remain familiar, the performance enhancements and subtle UI improvements make the upgrade worthwhile. Bartender 5 has seamlessly become an essential part of my workflow—keeping our Mac organized while offering flexibility that macOS itself simply doesn’t provide.

Compatibility and pricing

Bartender 5 requires macOS Sonoma (macOS 14) or later and is not backwards-compatible with earlier macOS versions. If you’re running macOS Ventura or earlier, you’ll need to stick with Bartender 4.

As for pricing, Bartender 5 is available for a one-time purchase with lifetime updates for the current version. It’s also available through Setapp, which offers access to Bartender alongside many other macOS utilities as part of a subscription package.

Final thoughts

Bartender 5 is more than just a menu bar organizer—it’s an essential utility for anyone who values both productivity and aesthetics. Its new features, from Advanced Triggers to the Bartender Bar, make it a highly customizable tool that seamlessly integrates into macOS Sonoma and Sequoia ecosystem. Whether you’re a casual user who just wants a cleaner menu bar or a power user who needs full control over app visibility, Bartender 5 has something for everyone.

For more details or to download Bartender 5, visit Bartender.