by Pity the poor menu bar. It seems like just about every app you install these days wants to put a little icon up there, often to little real advantage. It’s not uncommon for that ever-expanding line of icons on the right to extend under the reach of the menus on the left. In short, the menu bar is a mess.
That’s the problem that Bartender is here to solve. Yes, it adds a menu-bar item of its own. But within that menu item you can hide other menu-bar icons that you don’t want to see all the time. The utility also lets you rearrange menu-bar items—OS X lets you rearrange only Apple’s menu extras.
When you open Bartender’s preference window and click the Menu Items icon, you see, listed on the left, your menu bar’s current contents. Those apps and utilities are divided into three sections: System Items (OS X built-in menu extras, such as AirPort and Bluetooth), third-party apps with active menu-bar items, and third-party app that have menu-bar items that you’ve disabled within those apps themselves. You can add to that list using the usual plus-sign button (+), or remove items (-) from it. You can even put the Notification Center icon in Bartender’s Bar (or hide the Notifications Center icon completely, if you wish—you can still access Notification Center using the standard gesture, a two-finger leftward swipe from the right edge of the trackpad).
Select any item on the left and you get several options for handling it: You can opt to keep it where it is, move it out of the main menu bar and into the Bartender Bar, or hide it altogether. You can also choose to have Bartender alert you when an app with a menu-bar item has been updated (by showing you the icon on the menu bar for a duration you choose).
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