Release notes
What's changed
- Icons keep their shape. Menu bar items aren't square — some carry text or a meter beside the glyph. The virtual bar used to force every icon into a 34×34 square, stretching narrow ones and squeezing wide ones by up to ~27%. Icons are now scaled by height only, so each keeps its own aspect ratio and the same size relative to the others as in the real menu bar.
- "Show Real Items" can be undone. Choosing it used to leave the real icons expanded with no way back short of quitting. It is now a toggle — the menu reads Hide Real Items (with a checkmark) while they're shown, and clicking the VirtualBar icon also folds them back before opening the virtual bar.
- Consistent fallback icons. When an icon can't be captured, its app icon is shown desaturated, so it sits in with the monochrome menu bar glyphs instead of standing out in full colour.
Install
curl -fsSL https://github.com/MuqiuPeng/VirtualBar/releases/latest/download/VirtualBar.zip -o /tmp/VirtualBar.zip \
&& ditto -x -k /tmp/VirtualBar.zip /Applications \
&& xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/VirtualBar.app \
&& rm /tmp/VirtualBar.zip \
&& open /Applications/VirtualBar.app
Upgrading replaces the app in place. Because the build is ad-hoc signed, macOS treats it as a new app: you'll be asked to grant Accessibility and Screen Recording again, and Screen Recording takes effect after VirtualBar is relaunched.
Requirements
- macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon