How to Move Mac Apps to the Menu Bar (and Why You Should)
I live in a small, cramped apartment in a big city. Every time I bring something into the house, I feel like I have to throw it away so that the clutter doesn’t accumulate. In some ways, my struggle with the limited screen of my MacBook mirrors my struggle with space at home. As a tech journalist, I install apps daily, which means a crowded dock or menu bar.
Thankfully, I’ve mostly solved my Mac’s menu bar issues , but the dock is still a nuisance. It’s full of apps, and even though I’ve moved it around a few times , it still takes up too much space on my 13-inch laptop screen. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve switched to auto-hide the dock (under System Preferences > Desktop & Dock ). There’s just one problem left: I still need access to the apps I’ve stored in the dock. Luckily, with a few tweaks, I can easily move apps out of my cluttered dock and into an organized menu bar. Here’s how.
Add Any App to the Mac Menu Bar
If an app doesn’t have a menu bar icon (we’re Slack, look!), macOS won’t let you move it there by default. That’s where Badgeify comes in. It lets you add any app to your Mac’s menu bar, where it works just like it does in the dock. You can click an app’s menu bar icon to open it (or switch to the active window), or right-click the icon to reveal additional features (if available).
Once you install Badgeify, you’ll need to grant it accessibility permissions, although this is a standard feature for apps that modify the menu bar. Once you do, the app will open immediately to the Settings page, with the General tab selected by default. Click the + button in the Badges section to start adding your favorite apps to the menu bar. The free version lets you add three apps to the menu bar, but there’s a trick that lets you add one more.
To add more apps to the menu bar, you can also group multiple apps into a folder and add it to the menu bar. Clicking on the folder icon in the menu bar will open a drop-down menu with the apps inside. Unfortunately, the free plan is limited to one folder, and that folder can only hold two apps. The two standard app icons you can add to that folder give you a total of four free apps in the menu bar. However, the paid version removes these limitations.
Customize Menu Bar Icons with Badgeify
If you like the free plan, you can pay $9 to unlock all the features on one Mac, or $16 to use the app on up to three Macs. This removes the limit on the number of apps and folders you can add to the menu bar, as well as the number of apps in a folder. It also opens up some customization options, which is nice.
Among these features, the one that I find most useful is the ability to hide an app from the menu bar when it has no notifications. For example, by adding Messages to the menu bar, you can hide it until someone messages you. That way, if the app icon is there, you’ll know you need to read the message. This feature can be found in Badgeify’s Settings > More .
It also allows you to customize the look of the app icon in the menu bar, which is very convenient for me since I prefer monochrome icons. However, if you are feeling creative, you can add your own app icons. This feature is available under Badgeify > General settings . Click the i button next to the app name to start customizing it.
Badgeify’s advanced settings page also has an experimental feature called “App Integration.” It only works with browsers for now, and allows you to right-click on a browser icon when you add it to your menu bar to open a list of all your open tabs. This makes it easier to quickly switch to the browser tab you want, which can speed up your workflow.
Overall, I really like Badgeify and it was well worth the investment. I used it to move Slack, Messages, WhatsApp, and my email client (FMail) to the menu bar, making life much easier without a dock on my screen and making the most of my screen real estate.