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Sep
03
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NOTE: THIS SOFTWARE IS REALLY IN ALPHA STATE. E.g. it crashes Gecko based Apps atm.
I recently switched from Windows to Mac and I’m happy with this decision most of the time. But sometimes Mac OS X just makes me sick. I totally dislike the multimonitor support in Mac OS – even in Snow Leopard it just sucks. If you have two – or more monitors connected to your Mac or Macbook you still have only one Dock and one Menubar. So if you are working with a program at a screen without menubar and want to use the menu you have to move your mouse all the way back to the menubar (just to move it back to the other screen a few moments later).
So a few days ago I decided to solve this problem for me and began programming a little tool. Now it is far far away from beeing perfect, it has many bugs and many todos but basically it works. ATM I call my tool SecondBar (because yet it only supports a second menubar, future versions will let you have as many bars as you want).
I’m a total noob in programming Mac OS X so it was hard to get it working… there are many limitations which I didn’t come around yet. For example the behaviour of the buttons is not like the ones in the original Menubar. SecondBar also is pretty slow, I’ll try to solve this in future versions. Some programs like Firefox are not supported yet, I hope to solve this with a future version too.
If you still want to try SecondBar get the current Version in one of the newer posts of this blog (http://blog.boastr.net )
You have to enable access for assistive devices in order to get it work, this can be done in the system preferences of your Mac.
If a button goes red when you click on it, this means that the menu isn’t loaded completely or that the program is not supported yet.
Here is my list of TODO’s:
- make it faster
- make it support all programs
- display key combinations like in the real menubar
- make the button behaviour more like the real menubar
- support more than one additional menubar
I don’t know if someone will use this tool, so if you like the idea (not the realization, because this is far away from final) post a comment and I’ll put more effort in getting it work smoothly.
One Ping to “SecondBar – gives you a second menubar for OSX”
13 Responses to “SecondBar – gives you a second menubar for OSX”
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1. Louis Says:
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:37 pmI just ordered a second display literally last night, and was wondering how I’d cope with just having one menubar for the two displays. I definitely think that this is a good idea.
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2. Sid Says:
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:10 pmThis would be amazing – though I have been using osX for a while, I have only recently started using a second screen and could definitely use some of the functionality you have described. I’m still using Tiger, so I don’t know if ‘secondbar’ will work for me, but will definitely give it a whirl as you continue to keep it updated. I’ll be switching to Snow Leopard soon, so I guess I’ll use it then.
Thanks! -
3. fidel Says:
September 4th, 2009 at 11:37 amHi,
the idea sounds great – as Apple seems to be totally ignoring dual-(or more) monitor users regarding the menubar.
I’ll try it as soon as i switched to 10.6. The current version doesn’t even start in 10.5 so i have to wait some more days
Best regards & i wish you good luck with this project.
fidel
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4. admin Says:
September 4th, 2009 at 12:02 pmOh good to know it doesn’t work on 10.5, maybe I use some 10.6 specific functions…
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5. Scott Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 7:47 pmi’ve been waiting for something like this, but i’m still on 10.5.
For a workable solution, you don’t even need to duplicate the menu bar, just move the menu bar back and forth based on the screen containing the mouse. But best of luck.
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6. RipCat Says:
November 9th, 2009 at 9:56 amOn 10.5 but this is something I really need. I use four monitors, inc a Cintiq wacom. So being able to duplicate the menu bar is a massive time saver for me. Keep it coming, good luck!!!
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7. George Says:
November 14th, 2009 at 8:32 amThis sounds like an excellent app, need to wait on updating to 10.6 but looking forward to trying this out.
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8. SoulTrader Says:
November 25th, 2009 at 4:45 amgreat idea, but on my Mac Pro it crashes all the time and I can’t hide the dock icon, if I do it disappears with crash notice at all.
If you can get it stable it is gold.
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9. blank Says:
November 26th, 2009 at 1:00 pmGreat Program. Finally a solution that works – i used applescript in order to move my window positions but for some reasons the lag was beyond reasonable. Just one question/comment – is it possible to get another quickkey (control-option-command down) to display a window on the second screen on the lower (laptop) monitor in fullscreen? I use the big one as main screen, and my laptop is positioned directly below it. In case i want to move the window to the smaller (laptop) screen i always need to resize it – which sucks. Any chance you can implement that feature?
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10. nyso Says:
December 8th, 2009 at 10:14 amLove these tool, please also add a possibility to switch to the old size of a window.
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11. Xavier Says:
December 8th, 2009 at 5:31 pmThis is what I have been looking for. I will try it as soon as I get my second screen.
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12. chris Says:
December 9th, 2009 at 5:22 pmGreat idea – i’ve been looking for such a solution all since OS 9 days!
Would be nice if you’d put some more work into it.
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13. ClimbrJohn Says:
December 17th, 2009 at 9:59 pmLove this app; thanks so much! Looking forward to future releases.
September 4th, 2009 at 8:08 am
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