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or more than a decade, Bartender has been an essential utility for keeping your menu bar in check. Hundreds of thousands of Mac users trust Bartender, and it’s one of the first apps they install.
Over time, Bartender has evolved into something more than just menu bar cleanup. With the introduction of Bartender Bar, Triggers, and Widgets, you can now have your perfect menu bar, with your own custom items.
Today, we’re excited to share the launch of Bartender Pro, a major new release that expands what Bartender can do.
This is also a special milestone for us at Applause.
Over the past year, we’ve welcomed beloved apps like Strongbox and Sheet Music Scanner into the Applause portfolio. In those announcements, we talked about what we hope to be for great independent software: a long-term home, a careful steward, and a team that can help these products keep getting better.
Bartender Pro is the next step in that story. It is the first major new product release from an app in the Applause portfolio.
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Today, we’re excited to share the launch of Bartender Pro, a major new release that expands what Bartender can do.
Introducing Top Shelf
The first tool included in Bartender Pro is Top Shelf. It’s a powerful new way to interact with the notch, bringing common utilities into what used to simply be wasted space.
Top Shelf supports file storage, clipboard management, AirDrop, widgets, and a suite of live activities just like your iPhone.
There are widgets for live weather, both for home and away, gorgeous controls for Apple Music and Spotify, and a glanceable calendar to keep you focused.
Live activities give you a quick heads up of what’s happening, from running Claude Code or Codex sessions and agents to upcoming meetings with one-click joining.
Top Shelf seamlessly interacts with Bartender, getting out of the way when you expand your bar, and making sure no items are tucked away behind it - just like the real notch.
We’ll be continuing to add more to Top Shelf, and to the wider Bartender Pro suite, over the coming months and years.
Early Reactions from the Mac Community
We’ve been grateful to see Bartender Pro receive a warm response from both users and the Mac community.
MacRumors
9to5Mac
Six Colors
AppAddict
Brett Terpstra
Bartender Pro is available now for users who want to get even more out of their menu bar and notch area. It includes Bartender 6, Top Shelf, future upgrades, and any additional features added to the Pro suite over time.
Growing the Apps People Love
Applause exists to be a great long-term home for exceptional apps.
Sometimes that means helping a founder transition a product into its next chapter. Sometimes it means giving an app more engineering, design, and growth resources. And sometimes it means shipping something entirely new.
Bartender Pro is an example of what we hope to do more often: take a product with a passionate user base, understand what makes it special, and then build carefully on top of it.
We’re proud of this release, grateful for the early response, and excited for what comes next.
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