Every macOS developer has roughly 24 pixels of vertical space sitting at the top of their screen, doing almost nothing. That strip — the menu bar — is the most underrated piece of UI real estate in the entire operating system.
I've been building menu bar apps for the past year, and I'm convinced more developer tools should live there. Here's why.
The Problem With Windows
Most developer tools default to a full window. Dashboards, monitors, analytics — they all want to be the center of attention. But here's the thing: you don't need a window for information you glance at.
Think about how you check the time. You don't open a clock app. You glance at the corner of your screen. That's the mental model menu bar apps tap into — ambient information that's always available without context-switching.
What Belongs in the Menu Bar
Not everything should be a menu bar app. But certain categories of developer tools are perfect for it:
Live metrics — CPU usage, memory, network activity. Anything you check reflexively throughout the day. I built TokenBar specifically for this reason: when you're working with LLM APIs, knowing your token count in real time without opening a separate dashboard changes how you work. One glance, back to coding.
Toggle switches — VPNs, DNS overrides, proxy settings. Things you flip on and off. A full app for a toggle is absurd.
Status indicators — Build status, deployment health, CI pipelines. Green dot means good, red dot means stop what you're doing. No window needed.
Quick capture — Clipboard managers, snippet tools, quick notes. The interaction takes two seconds. A window just slows you down.
The Technical Case
From a development perspective, menu bar apps on macOS are surprisingly pleasant to build:
-
NSStatusItemgives you the menu bar icon with minimal boilerplate -
NSPopoverlets you attach rich SwiftUI views to the icon - Memory footprint stays tiny because there's no window to manage
- Launch-at-login is straightforward with
SMAppService
The constraint of a small popover actually forces better design decisions. You can't cram features in when you have 300x400 pixels to work with. Every element has to earn its place.
The Workflow Argument
Here's what I've noticed after months of using menu bar tools exclusively: my dock is almost empty.
I launch my editor, my terminal, and maybe a browser. Everything else — token tracking, focus timers, system monitors — lives in the menu bar. The result is fewer windows competing for attention and less time spent ⌘-tabbing between apps.
This isn't minimalism for the sake of it. It's a genuine workflow improvement. When information is ambient rather than active, you stop context-switching to check on things and start just... knowing them.
Build One Yourself
If you've never built a menu bar app, start with something you personally check too often. Your API usage. Your build queue. Your Pomodoro timer. Whatever it is, move it to the menu bar and see if your workflow improves.
The 24 pixels at the top of your screen are free. Use them.
I build native macOS utilities. TokenBar lives in your menu bar and tracks LLM token usage in real time. $5, lifetime.
Top comments (0)