2 min read

Better Status Bar for MacOS

Combine Ubersicht, Yabai, SKHD and Simple-Bar for an awesome MacOS menu bar.

I've been using Ubersicht to generate a pretty status bar for me on MacOS:

Ubersicht status bar (right)

After upgrading to Big Sur, I've noticed that my Battery widget seems to have broken. While searching for ways to fix it, I stumbled upon https://www.jeantinland.com/toolbox/simple-bar/

simple-bar | Jean Tinland
simple-bar screenshot (right)

This is a beautiful bar that brings some more interactivity to the widgets, and fixes some of the issues I had with the yabai space indicators.

Old:

Ubersicht - old indicators (left)

New:

simple-bar screenshot (left)

I now set my MacOS menu bar to automatically hide, and use this bar instead for all of my needs.

Combined with named spaces and app icon previews, it's now very convenient to navigate on my Mac.

If you want to set this up, install these apps:

  1. Yabai + skhd (sample configs: yabai and skhd)
  2. Ubersicht
  3. Simple Bar