Feature requests: Spillover menu for new MBP with notch and spacing expands when opened

[balmic]

A couple of things to request: On the new MBP with the notch, I was wondering if there is a way to implement a dropdown menu as the last menubar item before the notch to spill over any icons that can't fit on the menu bar? Might be something that could be used on notch-less displays as well if needed.

The second request is to have an option to not increase the spacing of the menu bar when the hidden items are opened on macOS Monterey. I have found that this happens on my main display, but not external displays so it may be a bug.

Device Details

• OS: macOS 12.01
• Device: MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2021)
• App version: 1.8 (12)

Thanks!

[zmilonas]

have an option to not increase the spacing of the menu bar when the hidden items are opened on macOS Monterey

I think this is covered/duplicated by #180 issue :) I'd suggest keeping these two separated cause the #180 seems rather like a bug than a enhancement

[tolgraven]

Another alternative would be an option where Hidden Bar hides the items to the right of the arrow when activated. That way there's likely no risk of overflow, and it's not like (at least for me) we're interested in what's normally showing when opening the others. This would also sort my main current issue - Hidden Bar and its alternatives is literally what's causing my overflow - space is precious and an additional three icons is more than can fit since iStat takes up most space for me.

[unphased]

The problem with the new notched computers' Monterey menu bar is that the 40% of real estate is significantly reduced compared to before.

• You only ever get 40% of the space. on a non-notched computer, the space could be as high as 70% or more if you merely swap to an app that has few menus in the bar. That degree of flexibility is not present at all.
• Due to the taller size of the menu bar (to accommodate the size of the notch), the padding applied to icons is increased. This actually serves to further reduce the available real estate, since fewer icons (of the same size) can be fit in the same horizontal space if the padding became larger.

As-is now, the logic of Hidden Bar is not helpful on these computers. Because the behavior of the menu bar on these computers is such that the left most icons simply get dropped if they do not fit, since hidden bar's logic does not allow in any way for making RIGHT MOST icons hidden, this app cannot in its current form be used as a tray to store more icons than would normally fit in the first place. Indeed the way it works now, the use of Hidden Bar guarantees a reduction in real estate in the menu bar. Its only purpose can be to "reduce clutter", which is certainly a laudable goal, but it surely is lower on the priority list than "not make it impossible to access items", which is the showstopping ux problem a lot of us with these computers are currently trying to address.

SUGGESTION:

Allow an option to adjust Hidden Bar such that a group of icons on the right side can be toggled (rather than the left side). It will be somewhat unintuitive for sure, because control center and clock will probably need to be exempt from the hiding logic. This would combine nicely with built-in truncation behavior ,which happens on the left, to allow for using hidden bar as a way to access all of our icons (provided that they would fit in ~70% of the width in total. This is still not ideal)

[unphased]

re: original topic, the spacing changing from right-aligned to justified when you near filling the space is built-in menubar behavior, and I find it aggravating as well. But it seems to be a feature not a bug courtesy of Cupertino, and sort of unrelated to the general issue of there not being enough damn space in there for stuff.

[florian-obradovic]

This would be awesome to see as a new feature! Bartender4 solves it like this:

[navinthomas]

This would be a great addition for people who use the new MacBooks. macOS's native handling of menubar icons covered by the notch is just simply unacceptable. Using a menubar manager like Hidden Bar simply makes the issue worse. They do make the menubar clean, but at the cost of adding to new icons to the menubar. This pushed other menubar app icons into the notch area, thereby making products like Hidden Bar a frustrating experience on the new MacBook. On one hand, you want the clean UI provided by Hidden Bar, but on the other hand it comes the cost of making certain menubar app icons 100% inaccessible.

It's a pity that Hidden bar has to add a specific handling for this, when macOS should have handled it natively.