Barbee on Mac: how to set it up

The right end of your menu bar has become a wall of small shapes. Somewhere in it is the icon you are reaching for, and every time you reach for it you scan the whole row first. Barbee is one of the tools people install to end that, and setting it up takes a few minutes. The part that actually decides whether it works for you is not the install. It is a set of choices you make in the first hour: which icons stay visible, which permissions to grant, and whether the free download covers what you need.

This walk through uses only what the App Store listing states, checked on 10 September 2026. Prices in in-app purchase listings vary by region, so confirm the numbers on your own store page.

Where it comes from and what it needs

Barbee is distributed through the Mac App Store. The download is free and the paid tier, labelled VIP, is unlocked through in-app purchase. The listing states macOS 11.0 or later, a download size of 11.2 MB, and twenty interface languages. The app first appeared on 9 May 2021, and the version shown at the time of writing is 4.3, dated 15 June 2026.

Distribution through the App Store shapes a few things about living with the app. There is no first launch dialog about an unidentified developer to work around, because everything on the store is signed and reviewed. Entitlements are tied to your Apple ID rather than to a licence key, so a new Mac means signing in and installing from the purchased list, with nothing to keep in a password manager. In exchange, updates arrive when the store delivers them. There is no build to download from a vendor site if you want a fix before it ships.

The release notes for 4.3 list reusable dividers, support for SKILL and MCP, work on automation related issues, reduced CPU energy use, and fixes for mouse interference. The automation entries matter if the plan is to drive the menu bar from a script or a shortcut rather than by clicking, so it is worth knowing that this area is being worked on rather than assuming it is dormant.

The permissions it asks for, and why

After install, the first run asks for system permissions. A published review of the app describes the requirement plainly: Screen Recording and Accessibility, both granted in System Settings.

Those two requests look alarming out of context, so it helps to know what the category of tool needs them for. Organising a menu bar means acting on icons that belong to other applications. On macOS, reading what another process draws on screen and moving another process's interface elements are both gated. Recognising which icon is which requires reading the screen. Collapsing and repositioning them requires acting on elements outside the app's own window. That is the whole reason both switches exist in that panel.

Two practical notes. Granting either permission usually requires quitting and reopening the app before it takes effect, so if the settings appear correct and nothing happens, restart the app before assuming a bug. And these grants persist. If the app is removed later, the entries stay listed in System Settings until they are removed by hand, which is worth remembering when the time comes to clean up.

What the free download covers, and what VIP unlocks

The listing separates the two tiers clearly. The features named as part of the VIP service are: no limit on how many times menu bar icons can be shown and hidden, support for a menu bar with a notch, arranging the icons as you want, reduced icon spacing, cloud backup and profile sync, use with scripts and shortcuts, and a choice of menu appearance styles.

Read that first item carefully, because it defines the free tier. Showing and hiding is capped in number without VIP. That is enough to evaluate the app and not enough to live in it, which is the intent of the design. New users get a trial of three days per Apple ID.

Item	US listing	Japan listing
Download	Free	Free
Lifetime	12.99 USD	2,000 JPY
Yearly VIP	4.99 USD	800 JPY
Free trial	3 days per Apple ID	3 days per Apple ID

The listing also includes tip style purchases named Americano, Latte and Mocha. Those support the developer and are not feature unlocks, so they can be ignored when working out cost.

One thing to settle before choosing the yearly option: a subscription renews on its own, and deleting the app does not stop it. Cancelling happens in the Apple ID settings, separately from removing the software. If that kind of housekeeping tends to slip, the one time purchase removes the question entirely. A side by side view of what different tools include at each price sits on the pricing page.

Sort the icons before opening any settings panel

This is the step people skip, and it is the step that decides the result. Before configuring anything, take the icons currently in the menu bar and put each one in one of three groups.

Group one is what you press. Not what you look at, what you click, three or more times a day. A VPN that gets toggled between networks, a clipboard history, a meeting mute control.

Group two is what you read but never click. Sync completion, recording in progress, battery and network detail. These carry information by their appearance alone.

Group three is everything else. Things configured once and never touched since, things used monthly at most, things whose app you no longer recognise.

Group three hides with no cost at all. Group two can hide if a notification can carry the same signal, and should stay visible if the change of state is the entire point. Group one is where the trouble starts. Once an icon you press often is hidden, every use becomes expand, locate, click, collapse. Four actions instead of one, several times a day. Some menu bar managers are built so a hidden icon stays directly clickable while the bar remains collapsed, which removes the round trip. Where that is not how the tool works, the practical answer is simply to leave group one visible and accept a shorter row rather than an empty one.

Writing the three lists down takes about ten minutes and makes the configuration itself mechanical. Starting inside the settings window instead usually means hiding everything, discovering the round trip, and putting half of it back.

What to test during the three days

Three days is short, so test in order of what would make you abandon the tool.

Reach time on the icons you press

Hide one group one icon deliberately, then count the actions needed to use it. One press, or four. This single number predicts whether the setup survives the month better than any feature list.

Whether the automatic rules match your day

Automatic showing and hiding is useful only if the conditions available match the way you actually work. A rule that reveals conferencing controls while a specific app is frontmost is worth a lot. A rule that fires on a timer usually is not. Build one real rule during the trial rather than reading about the feature.

Keyboard access

If collapsing and expanding can be bound to a key, the pointer never has to travel to the top of the screen. Check both that the binding exists and that a comfortable key combination is still free on your machine.

Behaviour after a restart

Restart the Mac at least once inside the trial window. Resident apps misbehave most visibly at login: a divider that fails to appear, an order that resets, an icon that duplicates. Finding that on day two is useful. Finding it in week six is not. A feature by feature view of what tools in this category do differently is on the features page.

If the notch is the reason you are here

On a MacBook with a camera housing in the middle of the display, extra icons do not merely crowd. They wrap behind the housing, where they are neither visible nor clickable. Anyone installing a menu bar manager for that reason has a harder constraint than someone who just wants a tidier row.

Two things follow. First, the fix is arithmetic: the number of permanently visible icons has to come down far enough that the row ends before the notch begins. A manager that hides twelve icons while you keep twelve visible has not solved the geometry. Group two from the sorting exercise is usually where the reduction has to come from.

Second, note that notch support appears in the VIP feature list rather than in the free tier. That means the behaviour you most want to evaluate is behind the trial rather than available indefinitely, so plan to test the notch case in the first day rather than the third.

The maintenance nobody mentions

A menu bar setup is not a thing you configure once. It drifts, for reasons that have nothing to do with the tool you chose.

New icons arrive on their own. Installing an app, updating one that gains a status item, or signing into a service can all add a shape to the row without asking. Whatever rule you set applies to what existed when you set it, so a row that was clean in March is crowded again by June unless the sorting exercise gets repeated. Doing it quarterly, in the same ten minutes it took the first time, keeps the arrangement honest.

Reinstalls and system updates can also reset order. When an app is removed and installed again, its status item is new as far as the menu bar is concerned, so it tends to reappear in the visible section rather than where it used to sit. This is where profile sync earns its place: if the arrangement is stored rather than implied by position, restoring it is a step instead of an afternoon. Cloud backup and sync of profiles is listed as a VIP feature, which is worth weighing if you work across two Macs and want the same layout on both.

Spacing deserves a separate mention. Reducing the gap between items is listed among the paid features, and it changes how many icons fit rather than how many are hidden. The two levers solve different halves of the same problem: spacing buys room, hiding removes demand. If a row is only slightly too long, spacing alone may be enough. If it is twice the width it should be, no amount of tightening will substitute for deciding what does not need to be there.

Finally, revisit group one after a month. The icons people actually press are rarely the ones they predicted, and the cheapest improvement available is usually moving two icons between groups rather than changing tools. Questions that come up during that review are collected on the FAQ page.

What to change first

Sort the icons into the three groups today, hide group three, and leave everything you press where it is. Then measure one thing during the trial: how many actions it takes to use a hidden icon. If that number stays at one, the setup is finished. If it does not, the property to look for next is being able to click hidden icons while the bar is still collapsed, which is what Koffret is built around.