Common Bar › Documentation

Common Bar documentation

Install

macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon and Intel.

  1. Download CommonBar.zip, unzip it, and move Common Bar to Applications. Or open the disk image and drag it there.
  2. Open it. The first time, macOS says it can't verify the developer: the build is signed but not notarized. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security, scroll down, and click Open Anyway next to Common Bar. Or clear the flag from a terminal: 
    xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Common Bar.app"
  3. Click the More folder and choose an icon to open it.

From a terminal

Both install the same build and clear the quarantine flag, so there is no Open Anyway step.

brew install --cask oddurs/common-tools/common-bar

Homebrew keeps it current with brew upgrade. The cask is in oddurs/homebrew-common-tools.

curl -fsSL https://oddurs.github.io/common-tools/install.sh | sh -s -- bar

The script downloads the latest release, checks it against the published checksum, installs it in Applications in place of an older copy, and opens it. Name several apps to install them all, or run it with no name to list them. It's short enough to read first.

Every release, with checksums and notes, is on GitHub. To check a download: shasum -a 256 -c CommonBar.zip.sha256.

On first launch the More folder appears beside the system icons, and every icon left of it moves off the menu bar. Right-click More, choose Settings…, and turn on Open at login.

Folders

Your folders are the boundary. Icons to their right, and the system's own, stay in the menu bar. Every icon to their left is kept off-screen all the time, past the screen's left edge, rather than under the notch or behind the app's menus, where macOS would shuffle the bar around it.

More is always there and holds every icon no other folder does. Add your own in Settings, give each a name and a symbol, and choose which icons go in it. Each folder is its own item in the menu bar, with its name beside its symbol unless you turn names off.

Icons you had showing when you first opened this version stay in the menu bar; icons you had hidden are in More. macOS's own ⌘-drag still moves the icons in the menu bar among themselves.

Open an icon

  1. Click a folder. It opens on the press, like a menu, without taking focus from the app you're in. It lists its icons, each with its app's icon and name, in groups: other apps, Common Tools, and macOS's own, which show their own symbol and, where macOS says it, their state. Start typing to narrow the list; arrows, Return and Escape work as in a menu.
  2. Choose one. Its menu opens where the folder's was, one of three ways, depending on how far down the folder the icon is.
  • Near the divider: Common Bar brings the icon on screen, moves it in beside the folder with the same ⌘-drag you would use (the pointer is hidden for a moment and put back where it was), and opens it as clicking it would. Once its menu or panel closes, the icon is dragged back to its place, off-screen.
  • Further along: there the icon would land behind the app's menus, where a drag can't start, so Common Bar reads the icon's menu through Accessibility without showing it, and the folder's list turns into a copy of it in place, headed by the icon with a way back. Submenus open the same way. The item you choose is pressed in the real menu.
  • A panel or popover, not a menu (Wi‑Fi, Battery): it can't be copied, so it opens wherever the icon comes on screen, which on a crowded notched display is under the notch or behind the app's menus.

If a drag doesn't land, Common Bar opens the icon where it is instead, and if it can't drag it back into its place, it puts it left of the divider, off-screen. With Open icons beside their folder off in Settings, every icon opens wherever it comes on screen.

Accessibility

Tidying the menu bar needs no permission. Listing and opening the icons in a folder needs Accessibility: on macOS 26 every menu bar icon belongs to Control Center as far as the window list is concerned, so only Accessibility says which app made each one, and only Accessibility can open it or move it.

Common Bar asks the first time you click a folder, never at launch. Until it's allowed, the folder says why and how many icons wait in your folders, with Allow Accessibility…. If the switch in System Settings is already on but the folder still asks, the switch belongs to an earlier copy of Common Bar; Reset and Ask Again in the folder clears it.

The bottom of every folder's dropdown has Edit Folder… and Settings…. Right-click a folder, or ⌃-click it, for Settings… (⌘,) and Quit Common Bar.

Settings

Open Settings… from the menu, or open Common Bar again from Finder or Spotlight while it's running.

Folders

  • Each folder in menu bar order, left to right: its symbol, its name, buttons to move it left or right, and one to delete it. More can't be deleted; a deleted folder's icons go back to it.
  • Add Folder adds one at the left.
  • Show folder names in the menu bar puts each folder's name beside its symbol. It's on to start with.

Icons in Folders

Every icon left of your folders, with the folder it's in. An icon is remembered by its app and its label, or its place among that app's icons when it has none, so it stays in its folder across launches.

Opening Icons

  • Open icons beside their folder, described above. It's on to start with.
  • Whether Accessibility is allowed, with a button to System Settings when it isn't.

General

  • Open at login starts Common Bar when you log in.
  • Check for updates daily asks GitHub for the latest release once a day. It's off by default and sends nothing about you or your Mac.

Common Tools

The other Common Tools apps, to open or get, and the version of Common Bar you're running.

Questions

I can't see More.

On a crowded notched display it can end up behind the camera housing if many icons sit right of it. Quit apps you don't need in the menu bar. Common Bar places itself beside the system icons on first launch to avoid this.

Where did my hidden icons go?

Into More, always-hidden ones included. Earlier versions showed them in the menu bar on a click or a hover; on a crowded notched display most landed under the notch, out of sight.

An icon's menu opened somewhere else, or not at all.

Common Bar opens an icon only once all of it is on screen: a menu opened off-screen can't be seen and would still take the keyboard. An app places its icon's menu from where it last knew the icon to be, which can lag behind the move; when a menu opens away from its icon, Common Bar closes it and opens it again. Every step is logged: log show --last 5m --predicate 'subsystem == "com.oddurs.commonbar" AND category == "open"'.

Build from source

The Command Line Tools are enough; Xcode is not required.

git clone https://github.com/oddurs/common-tools
cd common-tools
scripts/task build bar      # build for this Mac → build/bar/Common Bar.app
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