Bartender for Mac will soon hide/unhide menu bar icons depending on which screen you use

Bartender for Mac (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

A new Bartender beta enables menu bar items to be hidden only when connected to small screens.
Hidden menu bar items can be set to reappear when connecting to a larger display.
Bartender can be downloaded now and a four-week trial is available.

You'll soon be able to have Bartender hide and unhide your menu bar icons depending on the size of screen you're using — perfect for people who want to hide items on their MacBook but want to have them all available when they connect to a larger display at home or at the office.

Bartender has long been the go-to app for hiding unused menu bar items on smaller screens but soon it will allow users to have hidden items reappear when connected to a larger screen. The update is currently available as part of the latest Bartender beta under version number 4.1.35 and it works just as expected.

Bartender Menu Bar Item Hiding Screenshot (Image credit: iMore)

Allows you to show all your menu bar items on larger screens, while still hiding them on your laptop screen etc.

There is no indication of when we can expect the same feature to come to the stable version of Bartender but those who like to live on the wild side can install the latest beta and give that a try. Bartender is available from the developer's website and a four-week free trial is available. After that, it's a bargain $15 plus taxes.

Bartender really is the very best Mac app for people who need to have access to tons of menu bar icons but don't necessarily want to see them all the time.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.