Write ~WhateverYouWant~ into Your Menubar (Help you to focus your main task)

[Yiğit Konur]

It is my first Alfred Worklfow - especially first bash I've ever wrote for a reason deserves to share with people.

 

As you know, BitBar is a cool plugin which helps you to manage your Menubar. At last 3 weeks - I was crazy busy by dealing with tens of different things in an hour. That is why I create this script to manipulate BitBar Plugin text by using Alfred Workflow. Installation is not easy but I'll help you:

 

1. Install BitBar first.
2. Create a directory under your Documents/BitBar-Plugins, move .sh file into this (~/Documents/Bitbar-Plugins/write-into-menubar-bitbar-plugin.1s.sh)
3. Give execution permission to sh file by running this command in terminal:

chmod +x ~/Documents/Bitbar-Plugins/write-into-menubar-bitbar-plugin.1s.sh

 

Alfred Workflow: https://github.com/yigitkonur/write-into-menubar/raw/master/write-into-menubar-alfred-workflow.alfredworkflow

BitBar Plugin: https://github.com/yigitkonur/write-into-menubar/blob/master/write-into-menubar-bitbar-plugin.1s.sh

ReadMe: https://github.com/yigitkonur/write-into-menubar/blob/master/readme.md

Github: https://github.com/yigitkonur/write-into-menubar/

 

Download All Plugins: https://cloudup.com/csuF0DX90nf

Packal URL: http://www.packal.org/workflow/write-menubar-bitbar-extension

 

 

 

If you face with any problem, mention me on Twitter / @yigitkonur - create issue on Github - reply by here.

 

Edited February 22, 2017 by Yiğit Konur

[Acidham]

Great Idea!!

 

Some room for a lot of improvements manageable in Alfred (without touching bitbar)

• Change font size and add font in bitbar script
• Change refresh time
• Ability to add more than one entry
• Cycle thru more than one entry in bitbar
• Action to delete and add new items in alfred

 

[Maddog]

I had the same thought, how cool would it be to have custom text in the menubar, but I have CPU meters and stuff there, leaves no room for freeform text in there.

 

That's why I opened this question in AskDifferent, asking if anyone knows how to hide the textual menu part, so I could have room for custom text AND other cool things from bitbar.

[RuslanI]

On 2/27/2017 at 7:26 AM, Maddog said:

That's why I opened this question in AskDifferent, asking if anyone knows how to hide the textual menu part, so I could have room for custom text AND other cool things from bitbar.

Great question. I sent a mail to Bartender support, see if they can implement it. 

[deanishe]

On 27/02/2017 at 1:26 AM, Maddog said:

I had the same thought, how cool would it be to have custom text in the menubar, but I have CPU meters and stuff there, leaves no room for freeform text in there.

 

Nah, you just need a decently-sized screen

 

 

Edited April 4, 2017 by deanishe
Fighting the buggy forum software

[nikivi]

What I do is hide all useless menu bar items with Bartender (all menu items that bring no value and just take up space) and then split my menu bar into two parts.

 

One that I can bring up with a hotkey press which contains most important menu items. The dark bar in the image : 

 

 

 

And the other just stay in the menu bar itself which can be seen by dragging the mouse to the top. I like to hide the menu bar all together as it is distracting : 

 

 

 

Also I use this menu bar trick with BitBar very heavily. I even have it implemented so that it will take some arbitrary text (like a task from 2Do) and it will send this text to BitBar to update it. Here is Keyboard Maestro macro that does this (the regex is needed to strip some text and for it to be BitBar friendly) : 

 

 

 

This sends any task I highlight to BitBar so my menu bar gets updated with new task. I then use Hammerspoon to display it briefly on my screen like so : 

 

 

 

 

Here is the code that does this. 

 

I also have a macro that resets this menu bar text : 

 

 

 

It's actually quite useful.

 

 

Edited April 4, 2017 by nikivi

[Maddog]

On 4/4/2017 at 11:31 AM, deanishe said:

 

Nah, you just need a decently-sized screen

 

 

 

If you were next to me, I'd be pointing at your icons and asking "what does that do?" about each one. I never had as many mac apps as you have icons... lol

 

You're right, I have a tiny 15" screen and can fit maybe 2-3 words right now with most apps, but I just compared it visually, my IDE which is the longest textual menu example I have, is double in width than what safari has, so if I had as many menu icons as you, I would still not have room for (a lot of) freeform text in there.

[deanishe]

Yeah, I have a tiny, old MBA, too, and the text menus overlap the menubar icons all the time, even with Bartender. Come to think of it, I wonder if an IDEs menus would all fit on that tiny screen. 

 

As for what those menubar icons do, I'm not entirely sure. I turned off Bartender for the screenshot and was also rather surprised by the number of icons that it spewed onto my menubar. 

[Mehdi]

Thank you Yigit for a great workflow, i'm using it and very happy with it.

Next step is to make my todo app trigger it when I switch tasks  

 

@nikivi thank you for the inspiration, I'll look into keyboard maestro and try to replicate that!

 

@Maddog here is what you're looking for : https://github.com/w0lfschild/moreMenu

 

 

 

Mehdi

Edited December 23, 2018 by Mehdi

[Maddog]

On 12/23/2018 at 5:49 AM, Mehdi said:

@Maddog here is what you're looking for : https://github.com/w0lfschild/moreMenu

 

 

Appreciate the mention, I found it already a few months ago, couldn't get it to work on El Cap, then upgraded to Mojave and couldn't get it to work there as well. Maybe I haven't tried hard enough, it felt pretty hacky and I gave up quickly.

 

Instead, I have recently completely hidden my menu bar (I have a shortcut that brings it back if needed). I appreciate the extra real-estate and don't miss it. It was always just a trap to get me to use the mouse

 

Edited December 27, 2018 by Maddog

[zuzu]

Cool, but an update would be nice for those who are using Mojave's Dark Mode. 

[multicolor]

On 2/20/2019 at 11:08 PM, zuzu said:

Cool, but an update would be nice for those who are using Mojave's Dark Mode. 

 

I found this great little piece of code today and fixed it to work with both Light/Dark mode. Simply switch the plugin with this one:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d3uw88og6wux195/write-into-menubar-bitbar-plugin.1s.sh?dl=0

 

Doubled max characters also.

 

Cheers,

M