MenuBarDockX vs SwiftBar

MenuBarDockX is a free macOS utility that gathers menu bar icons hidden behind the notch or pushed off-screen and places them in a floating panel. Open the panel by clicking its overflow indicator or pressing Control+Option+Command+M. Tabs cover All, System, Development, Cloud, Security, and Utility; icons can be reordered manually and assigned categories. Bundled rules classify icons from Docker, JetBrains, Dropbox, 1Password, and Raycast. The project says processing is local, with no telemetry or external server, and the Swift/AppKit app has no third-party dependencies. It requires macOS 14 or later on Apple Silicon or Intel, although Intel and Sonoma have not been formally tested. Accessibility permission is required; Screen Recording may support icon images and background sampling. Builds are unsigned and unnotarized, so Gatekeeper may warn. On macOS 15 or later, right-click forwarding falls back to Toggle/Quit.

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.