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30+ Free Menubar Applications for Mac

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Menubar applications are sometimes more favorable than normal applications because not only these menubar applications can run seamlessly on background but also they can save most of our valuable dock space.

Most importantly, in this article you will see some variations of useful, free menubar applications. Let's try them out!

Caffeine

Caffeine is used to prevent our Mac from automatically going to sleep mode and especially useful for watching movie. Using this, we won't be worried that our Mac accidentally going to sleep mode.

Delibar

A simple del.icio.us desktop client for Mac OS X, to help collects all of our bookmarks in the menubar. It's way simpler to access our bookmarks this way.

iStat Menus

With iStat Menus, monitoring our system stats is just a glance away, which is by looking at our menubar. iStat Menus can display various system stats, ranging from CPU Speed and Memory Usage, up to Fans Speed.

Many have known and used this, but I believe it's important to re-emphasize it again.

SpaceControl

SpaceControl is used to track down used and available disk space to let you set alerts based on certain used space thresholds.

Another way to see our remaining space is to use Get Info panel, but that will be much slower than this.

ClipMenu

ClipMenu can assist us in managing clipboard history. With ClipMenu, we can store up to 8 clipboard types, from plain text to image. This is very useful if you've different tasks at hand that need more than 1 clipboards.

DiggUpdate

DiggUpdate is the fastest and easiest way to receive updates from Digg. When a new stories hit the front page or friends digg a story, we will be presented with a gorgeous notification window.

Check Off

Check Off is a to-do list that calmly sits on Mac's menubar. Though it's just a simple interface, but with this we can easily keep track of our tasks.

BwanaDik

BwanaDik is a menubar app that monitors network for a good connection. It can also quickly copy WAN and LAN IP address to the menubar.

Eigenclock

Eigenclock is a menubar clock that features a fully customizable menubar display format, as well as a nice-looking calendar in a pop-up menu.

FMenu

FMenu is a menu extra providing customizable Growl notifications about various Facebook events, a menu to easily access common Facebook pages.

It's really really useful for Facebook addict.

Isolator

Isolator is a small menubar application that helps you concentrate. Upon turning it on, it will isolate you from other running applications by showing only one active application.

I love this! It really helps me concentrate on one thing.

WeatherDock

WeatherDock allows us to display weather information the way we want it. And it's sitting on our menubar, allowing us to easily update and show current weather status.

HimmelBar

HimmelBar provides an icon in the menu bar to quickly access your installed applications located under standard locations such as local, user, network and developer applications.

HimmelBar's behavior resembles that of our Dock List View, but by installing HimmelBar, we can save our precious Dock space.

ClipboardSharing

ClipboardSharing is a Mac OS X application that allows you to share the contents of your clipboard with other users, either across the network or locally.

I haven't really tried this, but I love the idea to share our clipboards.

PTH iTunes Notifier

PTH iTunes Notifier is a Mac OS X utility that gives you full control over iTunes from within the menubar. It gives you a simple controller on the menubar that allows you to forward/reverse/play/pause with a single mouse click.

IPMenulet

IPMenulet shows the current external IP address in the menubar.

URLWell

Easily save and access URLs from a drop-down list. You can also drag-n-drop URL from your web browser and the URL will be added to this URLWell.

MeNotes

With MeNotes, we can easily create a new note from menubar to capture our quick thoughts. I know we will need this, especially if we are not specially trained to crystallize our thoughts.

coconutWiFi

coconutWiFi displays you a small aqua-bubble at the top of your screen which indicates whether you're in range of a wireless network or not.

F.lux

F.lux makes the color of our computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.

Menubar Countdown

Menubar Countdown is a simple countdown timer that displays itself on the right side of the Mac OS X menu bar.

Temperature Monitor

Temperature Monitor is an application to read out all accessible temperature sensors in Macintosh computers. The program can visualize the history graphs of the readings, display measured values in a large variety of fashions, or announce readings by speech output.

SMARTReporter

SMARTReporter is an application that can warn you of some hard disk drive failures before they actually happen! It does so by periodically polling the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard disk drive.

Spirited Away

Spirited Away checks each running application's activity, and if an application isn't active for a certain fixed time, Spirited Away hides the application automatically. It is, in effect, Spirited Away. *laugh*

I Love Stars

I Love Stars is my new freebie application that shows the rating of iTunes' currently playing song in the menu bar.

Anyway, half-star rating is not supported in this menubar application.

Process Wizard

Process Wizard is a menu hack that allows you to access to all the processes of your system (applications, background applications, user processes, non user processes) and to change their priority.

InstantShot!

InstantShot! offers classical screenshot functionality for capturing the whole screen, a portion of it or a window and also the option to make timed screenshots or to make delayed captures over time.

RSS Menu

RSS Menu is a systemwide menu that allows you to read and organize your favourite RSS or Atom feeds. The articles are automatically updated and you will get a notification when new articles are available or when some other event occurs.

WeatherBug

WeatherBug Alert for Mac helps you plan your day with confidence by putting severe weather alerts and your live temperature on your desktop.

AllBookmarks

AllBookmarks adds a new item to your Mac OS X menu bar giving you quick access to all your bookmarks. All your Safari, Firefox and Flock bookmarks are shown and can be selected.

Pauser

Pauser is a menubar application that allows you to pause and then continue any process running on your Mac OS X user account.

Nomu

Nomu is an application that helps you to quickly access your NeoOffice documents and templates.

Nocturne

Nocturne is a simple app for switching a computer to night vision mode.

Perhaps you've other kind of menubar applications to share with us, why don't you speak out in the comment box provided?

Categories: Applications, Popular
Tags: Application, MenuBar, Menubar

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51 Comments

Leandro

Awesome list!

I'm also using TinyAlarm to setup quick alarms (like "Hey didn't you need to pee?" or "Go out a little, man!").

NaVi

Wow! One of your best articles ever! Looks like Cafeine has got an update  =)  I am going to put that one back in the menubar.. Oh and I also like iStatMenus and Isolator a lot.      And by the way I can really recommend "you control tunes" --> www.yousoftware.com

Rafael Vogel

Thanks for this great website and also great post!

I'd like to share with you the "Visor" app. Here's what they say about it:

"Visor provides a systemwide terminal window accessible via a hotkey, much like the consoles found in games such as Quake."

link: http://visor.binaryage.com/

brad

Love articles like this! Menubar apps are so fun.

Nelia

Wow. Your articles are so worth the wait. Love this one. Thank you. 

Joffrey

Mine are Dropbox, Snapplr, ClipMenu, Google Notifier,  Tweetie, and Growl. :)
Thanks for this great post!

Chaos

This site is so great. The best mac site after MacUpdate =D
You rock guys!

Greeting from Germany
Chaos

Micha

Wow, that's a helpful site! Thanks so much for the summary on all these apps. I don't know if "Breakaway" belongs to this category as well (as it sits in the menubar but doesn't really give any "useful" information), but I like it a lot and for a laptop user it's a good thing to have it (especially when you sit in trains a lot and lose your headphones once in a while... ;)

Nullvoid

I've been using MagiCal as a replacement for the built in dat/time display for a couple of weeks now. By no means a sensational app, but i like the look and feel of it

http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/magical

Kevin Harter

Thanks for the great tips!  Lots o' useful apps here, I found four that I had never heard of and will be using from now on.  In fact, I need a bigger monitor to extend my menu bar....!

netman

Great list, thanks! Anyway, just a small correction: I Love Stars does support half-star ratings. Just click on the last active star to turn it to a half-star. :)

McGrep

Excellent compilation, extremely comprehensive as well. Practically every use is up here, really useful. 

在加州的郭总

实在是没想到这个博主是华人阿,厉害!佩服!多多学习~ 感谢分享~

seyDoggy

Nice list. There is about 5 that I am about to try out right now. tnx

Andrew Pennebaker

Thanks for the mention! IP Menulet was a copy/paste build of a tutorial I once read. And nice to see you, Raphael. Visor is badass.

Expired Yogurt

Awesome list!  Very useful stuff. Gotta have convenience with styleee  ;D

Carlos

Hi all! 
if you use ical, you should try this one: MenuCalendarClock
http://www.objectpark.net/mcc.html
bye!

merkuree

great, great list. Really found some great apps on this list. Well done.

Ruban

Are you ppl from Singapore? LOL
I am from SG too!

Wendy

Wow, so you really check from our IP address, what an observation!

dylan hans

great list but i would recommend alarm clock 2 on apple.com/downloads .. it is what i use to get me up in the morning because i need my subwoofers bass

...but anyway it is an alarm clock app that lives in the side bar and can be controlled by the apple remote so no need to get up to snooze if your computer is on the other side of the room

Matt

Check out fuzzytime, shovebox, anxiety, and xmenu 

BTW Quicksilver FTW having it eliminates the need for at least 4 of these

Lasse Korsgaard

I really miss Bytecontroller on this list. I find that much more useful than a menu that shows your ip address. http://www.bytetastic.com/

Juan Pablo Vásquez

Great list 

Ryan

I just found you guys, and this list is awesome, I am so subscribing!  Thanks.
Are you on twitter?

Jung

my favorite is Caffeine.
what i really want  is that make all icons on menubar have same visual weight with solid color.

jean paul hope

Wow myself agree that your's is great website full of good articles just like to say thank you

Brett

Great list! A couple I like are Soundsource, allows you to switch inputs and outputs easily, and ifreemem.

ckfd

Great list. Great Site.

aaron

great list, there are a lot of useful apps here. 
i already know about a few of these and use them regularly, but there are a bunch that i haven't heard of and are really useful. 
thanks.

minusnix

Thanks for great great great list!! Check also this one:    http://creativebe.com/mainmenu/

Enter Your Name

very cool,i like it

Henry D'Andrea

Great list. I really love your website! Will check back daily! 

Brian H.

Great article.  I'm always looking for this kind of useful free stuff.  One question: where did you get those wallpaper images?  They're stunning!

Ajan

hey wendy, is there any menubar application that shows the song playing on iTunes??? I've been searching for such an application, but no luck so far

Chai Life

Glad to see you've got iStat Menus on there. That is an absolute must-have for me. I was lost without its' calendar for the few days between Snow Leopard's release and iSlayer's updated version.

Phil E. Drifter

"Caffeine is used to prevent our Mac from automatically going to sleep mode and *especially useful for watching movie.*" This statement makes you look retarded. Both VLC and Quicktime automatically prevent the screen from dimming and going to screen saver.

Nancy

Nice list. 

Check Off is not free; it's only free to try. Then $12.95 to buy.

orz.marvin

Nice. Thanks 4 sharing XD

Hey, see some chinese music
u like chinese music? or maybe u r chinese

Eddie

nocturne menu bar app works perfectly 

Joseph

Great site! Can anyone tell me how to rearrange the menu bar apps?

Joseph

Sorry, can't seem to reply to my comment .. If you hold down command you can move the default items, but doesn't seem to work for custom apps .. any ideas? Thanks!

Joseph

Found it, just a little plist (XML) editing .. take a look here if you're interested ..
http://www.geekology.co.za/blog/2009/02/rearranging-any-os-x-menubar-and-login-items/

Bill

Great list! You could add QuietRead, a free and very handy utility.
http://www.bambooapps.com


Martin Cleaver

Right, but what do you do once your menu bar is full?

ipage

amazing and useful list.
hard to find ur site. just wondering why u wont appear in top 10 google search rank. but it's ok, just bookmark and stumble this site. keep up good work!

Jason

Great list! Thanks!

kOoLiNuS

You're also missing Menu Meters: http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/ 

Student Brands

Thanks for the great info, Good job, Thanks again

Andy Tuba

An alternative to Isolator (which doesn't run in the menubar) is Think. It keeps a little floating bezel up to let you switch apps.

Tarecq Chebaro

I Really love your website, This article is great :D But I would like to know where did you get all these wallpapers, i mean they're just AWESOME :D

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