What’s in Your Menubar?
There are many useful little applications that for easy access, reside in OS X’s menubar. Also, many applications provide an access method via the menubar.
Searching MacUpdate for menubar or menu bar reveals over one hundred such applications.
This week, I’d like to take you through the one’s that I use. Here’s a screenshot of my menubar:
Working from left to right, I have Textpander; IP in Menubar; CheckOff; Growl; iChat; Menu Meters; Displays; iSync; Ink; AirPort; Battery; Date & Time; XMenu; and Spotlight. Those in italics are part of OS X.
Here’s a quick rundown on each of the others.
Textpander comes from the same developer as the very Butler. I’ve reviewed Textpander previously in my article A Dozen Mac Gems Unearthed in 2005
Textpander automatically substitutes short strings of text of text you type with longer plain text or formatted text that can include images. As well as text substitution, it is also useful for auto correcting common typos. Eg if I type “downlaod” Textpander automatically changes it to “download”.
IP in Menubar does exactly what the name says. For anyone who needs to know their IP address it’s useful. I also find it useful because if I lose connection, it shows “not connected!” or if the router’s not working properly it will show a different IP. It also lets you show the whole IP address, or or any portion of it, as I’ve done.
CheckOff is a menubar based ToDo list. It doesn’t talk to to iCal, it doesn’t have alarms. It’s just an organized ToDo list. And I like that. Keep it simple.
Growl is a notification extension for OS X. Many applications notify the system when they complete tasks, but the user isn’t always told. Growl intercepts these notifications and reports them to the user. Notifications can take a wide variety of visual forms, they can be spoken, or emailed - which could be useful if you were waiting for something to finish on a different computer.
When I first looked at Growl I couldn’t see how it would benefit me. Now I couldn’t live without it. For example, you’re waiting for a download to finish while you work on something else; or your waiting for an important email but don’t want to flick over to Mail every time a new mail comes in. Growl will show a message for a few seconds for each mail received. Of course if - unlike me - you’ve got friends, you might get a bit overwhelmed by this feature. But that’s cool, because Growl lets you turn individual application’s Growl notifications off.
MenuMeters,from the developer of Sidetrack, is a set of CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools. In my menubar, I only am using the memory monitor although I don’t find as much need to monitor memory since upgrading to 1GB.
XMenu is a free application from the the developers of the brilliant DevonTHINK, who say of XMenu:
“This program brings back the Apple Menu to Mac OS X and includes also a complete application launcher. By adding one or more global menus to the right side of the menu bar you can easily access your preferred applications, folders (and subfolders), documents and files.”
So that’s what’s in my menubar. What have you got in your’s (provide URLs if you can)?
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I found a ton of them at jeweledplatypus of which my most-used one is ByteController (to control iTunes). I also use Google’s Gmail Notifier and finally, my Last.fm tracker.
My list is at http://www.planetmike.com/blog/technology/osx-tiger/menubar01.shtml . I added Fuzzy Clock a few days ago, from http://www.objectpark.org/FuzzyClock.html.
What the heck is “Ink”?
Ink is the handwriting recognition interface if you have a graphics tablet attached. The Ink menubar item gives you quick access to a few of its settings.
My Menu bar is loaded… in order form Left to Right…
PopCharX. Access all extended characters with a pop-up menu. http://www.macility.com/products/popcharx/
Synergy. To control iTunes. http://wincent.com/a/products/synergy-classic/
Timbuktu Pro.
Stuffit Deluxe 10.
SlimBatteryMonitor. A nice colored replacement for the system battery menu item. http://www.orange-carb.org/SBM/
Missing Sync for Palm OS.
SwitchRes X. Controls multiple monitors and allows me to save resolution sets for different monitors. http://www.switchres.info/
WeatherPop Advance. Temperature and weather status icon. http://www.weatherpop.com/
iClock. Date/Time, floating calendar, stopwatch, calculator AND active application menu with direct access to all System Preference Panes AND System Menu Extras AND recent applications. There’s more, too! It’s loaded, but excellent! http://www.scriptsoftware.com/iclock/iclockmac.php
This doesn’t include my Airport guage, keyboard menu or Spotlight.
What I’d REALLY like to see is a menu bar item that holds other menu bar items as sub-menus…
Check out Schilling’s IP item BwanaDik. The menubar item changes color according to status
http://www.jschilling.net/sw_bwanadik.php
From left to right:
Adium
Audioscrobbler (Last.FM)
Photo Desktop
Keychain
Airport
Volume
Date and Time
Battery
My Bluetooth also pops in once in a while at random locations on my menubar
I do like to keep my menu bar relatively spare though
jeffharris said What I’d REALLY like to see is a menu bar item that holds other menu bar items as sub-menus…
So would I!
You guys are insane, how can you have a billion menubar items?? I mean seriously, Chris- how does putting the Growl icon in your menubar help you at all?? What you like looking at the pretty paw or something? Same for most of the others? iChat? your IP address?? what the…
I only use butler *shrug*. I guess I live a simple existence.
Although the checklist thing sounds interesting, I’m kind of accustomed to stickies (as you can probably see in my image.) I think i’ll checkout the memory monitor, though. I might even leave it there if I can make it b&w (nothing worse than red/green
Now I think about it… why would I want to see my memory monitor?? My memory’s all used up- well now I know I can look at the icon and be depressed about it? Awesome…
Luke, you make a good point, some are pointless. So I’ve removed Growl, Displays and Ink. (Although if I hook up a second display again, will reactivate Displays)
iChat on the other hand I almost always operate only thru the menubar. Plus I can see straight away if it’s lost connection or I’ve left it in an away state.
Textpander I leave there simply to remind me I’ve got it - it’s the sort of utility that becomes such a natural part of your work flow, you forget it’s there.
And, yeah, I prob don’t watch my memory anymore. But CPU…
So I’ve dropped MenuMeters memory monitor, but added the CPU monitor.
No kidding! My iBook’s overloaded menubar would appreciate it.
I’ve wondered why Unsanity hasn’t written a haxie to do something like that (yes, I should just ask them). That would tempt me to run APE, which I’ve avoided up to now.
It seems that the OS X menu bar doesn’t work as well as XP’s taskbar, quick launch bar and system tray.
I’d say that generally OS X is about 5 years behind Windows.
The sky is green; the earth is flat; the sun is a big ball of ice.
See? You can say whatever you like when you don’t back it up with any sort of rational argument.
There’s certainly a lot of things XP does better than OS X as Apple Matters has previously discussed http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/what_os_x_could_learn_from_windows/, but without explaining why, you’re just wasting screen ink, and screen ink is in a desperate shortage, so please don’t waste it.
| I’d say that generally OS X is about 5 years behind Windows.
oh crawl back under your bridge