Menu Bar Tools Bartender 3 and iStat Menus 5 Now Support macOS High Sierra

Surtees Studios recently announced it has released a public beta of Bartender 3 for testing on macOS High Sierra and macOS Sierra. It's a free update available within Bartender 2, which costs $15 after a free four-week trial.

The popular tool for rearranging or hiding Mac menu bar items has been completely rewritten in Swift, according to the release notes.

Bartender 3 also no longer requires the Bartender Helper to be installed in menu bar apps in order to control them. As a result, Bartender is no longer able to display the Bartender Bar beneath the menu bar—only within it.

The change was necessary since, in macOS High Sierra, Apple has apparently tightened its System Integrity Protection security feature, preventing system items like Spotlight search from being controlled by Bartender 2.

iStat Menus 5 was also recently updated with improved support for macOS High Sierra and MacBook Pro, MacBook, and iMac models released in 2017.

The popular Mac system monitor also gained improved per-process network monitoring, improved per-process memory monitoring in OS X El Capitan and macOS Sierra, improved Bluetooth battery monitoring, and improved disk monitoring performance, plus a fix for an issue with the sun position in light map.

iStat Menus is built into the macOS menu bar, providing power users with convenient access to system information, such as CPU and GPU usage, memory stats, fan speeds, temperatures, disk usage, and battery life.

iStat Menus 5 is $18 on developer Bjango's website, with a free 14-day trial available. The latest update is version 5.32.

(Thanks, Neil T.!)

Tag: iStat Menus

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

mixel

32 months ago

I need bartender. my menubar gets ridiculous without it.

Rating: 4 Votes

Bjango

32 months ago

This is great news, and we’re really happy to see Bartender working well on High Sierra.

iStat Menus 6 is coming.

https://twitter.com/bjango/status/900681265745076225

Yep, we’re in the middle of the beta, and things are going really well! Still a few more things to fix before we can release the update. It’s worth noting that anyone who buys iStat Menus 5 now will get iStat Menus 6 for free.

$18 for a single install still seems like way too much for iStat Menus, especially when I'd be fine with a free lite version.

The upgrade is heavily discounted for current iStat Menus customers (USD$9.99). We’ve been working on iStat Menus for over 10 years, and will continue to invest time and effort into making sure it’s the best system monitoring tool for macOS. Quite often, that means buying hardware for testing, especially for sensor support. This is our full time job, and we’re very grateful we can do it with the support of our customers.

iStat Mini might be a good option, if you don’t need all of iStat Menus’ features.
https://bjango.com/mac/istatmini/

Over the years there have been alternatives developed after iStat Menus went paid, like Menu Meters which I was using on OS X Mavericks, but unfortunately I'm not aware of any that work on Sierra or High Sierra.

Yep, feel free to use an alternative, or even stay on iStat Menus 5, if you want. If you like iStat Menus 5, I think you’re going to love iStat Menus 6.

Why... What could 6 offer over 5?

I love istat, but I'm not given a good reason to upgrade....

You can continue to use iStat Menus 5, if you like. iStat Menus 6 is a massive update though. We’ve been working on it for years.

When it comes out you can try it to see if you still feel that way, and make your choice. For me, I'm running the 6 betas, and I already paid them for the family pack upgrade.

Thank you! The feedback we’ve had during the beta has been amazing.

Rating: 3 Votes

swrobel

32 months ago

Anyone else getting sick of SIP?

Rating: 3 Votes

poi ran

32 months ago

$18 for a single install still seems like way too much for iStat Menus, especially when I'd be fine with a free lite version.

Over the years there have been alternatives developed after iStat Menus went paid, like Menu Meters which I was using on OS X Mavericks, but unfortunately I'm not aware of any that work on Sierra or High Sierra.

I'm using MenuMeters on Sierra, a fork from https://member.ipmu.jp/yuji.tachikawa/MenuMetersElCapitan/ , I have no idea about it working on High Sierra though. I use it in combo with HWMonitor (http://www.hwsensors.com/) , and see little use for iStat these days even if iStat is very "good looking" and probably safer to use than HWMonitor which I only run on a "hackintosh".

Rating: 2 Votes

Starflyer

32 months ago

Love Bartender! Worth every penny to reduce desktop clutter.

Rating: 2 Votes

pdaholic

32 months ago

Sorry for being dense — I'm not quite sure I follow this point. I've tried to install the beta of version 3 too see for myself but it won't let me... If anyone has installed it, can you explain/screenshot what this means?

At the moment I have the Bartender icon hidden completely and access it via keyboard shortcut, is that still an option?

Instead of the bartender menu popping up under the toolbar, it becomes the right side of the toolbar. Select the bartender icon again and it goes back to the toolbar.

If you are on high sierra, make sure you go to the bartender creator's blog and select the link to sign up for the beta. Then just hit update on the bartender menu and it will update.

Not sure about the keyboard shortcut but I can't imagine that would be gone. I can check later.

Rating: 1 Votes

Lauren Olivia

32 months ago

I really like the changes to Bartender. It’s feels more integrated instead of like a third party tool.

Rating: 1 Votes

BasicGreatGuy

32 months ago

I have never tried Bartender or iStat.

Rating: 1 Votes

redheeler

32 months ago

I wasn't aware of this fork, thanks. Sadly it looks like the original developer has abandoned the project and made no attempt to get it working on the newer MacOS, but I'll be using this one for sure.

The only thing I don't like about MenuMeters compared to iStat Menus is that it doesn't seem to offer a way to combine the hyper-threaded cores into physical cores. But I can live with that.

Rating: 1 Votes