Top menu bar tools for your Mac
There are numerous menu bar additions and hacks for the Mac. Not as many as for the Windows tray of course, but that's to be expected. I haven't seen them all, and this is not necessarily an exhaustive list (there are lots installed via hardware like Kensington's mouse tools), but there are some very handy toys out there for the Mac menu bar. In fact, I remember when Apple did away with the beloved control strip and everyone had a hissy fit. Well, you can get a lot of those functions back with some of these apps. Except those Iomega tools—but when's the last time you used a Zip or Jaz disk? Read on for my slightly large list of apps for your menu bar...Dan Frakes did a great write-up of some menu bar stuff way back in 2004 for Macworld. I'll mention some of those here, plus a few found over at the Unofficial Apple Weblog, and a couple I found all by my little self.
- Burnout menu is a to-do list on steroids and was covered by TUAW. Quite nice for less than six bucks.
- BluePhoneMenu is caller ID for those of you with your kickin' Bluetooth phones (lucky dogs). It automatically checks your address book, so it's very easy to conifigure. You can also SMS with it. TUAW covered it last year.
- MenuMeters are a favorite of C.K., as they show a plethora of full-color data in a tiny space. Network stats, cpu, memory, etc. are available, and the thing is released under the GNU GPL. Sweet.
- Another one of TUAW's favorite apps Growl includes the GrowliTunes plugin for the menu too. It gives you control over iTunes of course.
- SoundSource, an audio input/output selector sort of like SoundFlower.
- Ejector gives you access to ejecting disks (duh).
- If you listen to iTunes all day, iTunesRating lets you rate the current song.
- Get sick of launching System Prefs all day? Shortcut it with MenuPrefs.
- The clever iDiskMenu mounts and unmounts iDisk, WebDav or ftp volumes.
- Like many bloggers I need a better clipboard, so enter iPaste, with its own menu item too.
- Dan makes mention of a couple of You Control tools. You Control is a powerful utility that extends the functionality of the OS similar to QuickSilver. It does a lot, so be prepared for a learning curve but some great tools that go way beyond the menu bar...
- A while back I mentioned PiquantMenu, another app launcher and file browser that detaches from the menu when needed.
- MenuStrip will make fans of the Classic OS Control Strip happy. It does that, plus it'll sit up in the menu bar itself. It's several tools in one, including a very handy web search field in your menu.
- XMenu is yet another app launcher (bottom of the page). But it's from DEVONThink, so it's got that going for it, which is good.
- MenuCalendarClock is one of the best of its breed I've seen. Isn't the name self-descriptive? It's also available for Windows for some reason...
- One of my favorite apps Pod2Go has a menu bar shortcut for syncing all my stuff to my iPod.
Everything from Gmail checkers to RSS readers. That figures. And if you still aren't satisfied, why not make your own menu app?
