Bark vs SwiftBar
Bark
github.comSwiftBar
swiftbar.appSide by side
| Figure | Bark | SwiftBar |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Menu Bar Customization Software | 7.8 (#7) | 7.7 (#10) |
| Languages | The README lists 13 supported languages and says English quality is best for the time being. | Plugins can be written in Bash, Python, Ruby, Swift, or JavaScript. |
| License | The repository licenses Bark under MIT and says the pretrained checkpoints are available for commercial use. | The GitHub repository identifies SwiftBar as MIT licensed. |
| Maker | The model card identifies Suno.ai as the source of the official codebase. | The product page identifies SwiftBar as an open source project by Ameba. |
Plans
In their own words
SwiftBar
SwiftBar displays the output of custom scripts in the macOS menu bar and turns it into interactive menus. Plugins can be written in Bash, Python, Ruby, Swift, or JavaScript; SwiftBar runs them on a user-defined schedule and builds menu items from their output. Menus can include icons, colors, dropdowns, submenus, and click actions. Items can open URLs, run shell scripts, refresh plugins, or use keyboard shortcuts. Refresh intervals can be set in plugin filenames or with cron syntax in metadata. SwiftBar includes a plugin repository through its Get Plugins menu, and its product page describes hundreds of community-created plugins. Its plugin API is adopted from BitBar, allowing existing BitBar and xbar plugins to run. SwiftBar also supports plugins made with the macOS Shortcuts app and provides a settings interface for their refresh schedule. It is a free, open source project by Ameba, licensed under MIT. SwiftBar requires macOS 12 or later and is available as a direct download or through Homebrew.