To build your own menu bar app, I would recommend trying out xbar[1].
You can write "apps" in any language. The output of your program is used to construct the menu bar app, so if your program outputs this:
Hello
---
Open HN | href=https://news.ycombinator.com/
Then it will create a menu bar entry titled "Hello" with a single element in its drop-down menu, which will open Hacker News when clicked. You place your program in a specific directory for xbar to run, and it can be configured to run at a given frequency, e.g. once a minute to report the results of an API call or some measurement from your system, etc. Up to you to build the menu bar app you want.
If you use Hammerspoon, you can build your own menubar icons in Lua using the hs.menubar[1] API. I've built a clipboard history tool using that, for instance.
If you don't use Hammerspoon, you should check it out. :)
Hammerspoon is awesome. I have an `hs_message` alias that basically calls `hs.alert`. Super handy. The good thing about xbar is that you can quickly write small shells scripts. But I definitely love HS for global shortcuts/automation.
One of the more impressive things I've seen is stack line [0] a visualization tool that works with tiling window manager, yabai.
If it is not a hassle, could you please share some of these scripts? I always find rearranging apps/windows (I use multiple desktops) after a reboot quit painful.
You'll be disappointed because my use case is pretty simple - move the dock, remaximize all windows on the main screen and move chrome to my secondary screen.
You can write "apps" in any language. The output of your program is used to construct the menu bar app, so if your program outputs this:
Then it will create a menu bar entry titled "Hello" with a single element in its drop-down menu, which will open Hacker News when clicked. You place your program in a specific directory for xbar to run, and it can be configured to run at a given frequency, e.g. once a minute to report the results of an API call or some measurement from your system, etc. Up to you to build the menu bar app you want.[1] https://xbarapp.com/