14 DAY TRIAL // Using a small screen computer like the MacBook Air can make it difficult to keep your Menu Bar tidy. Sure you can disable some of the default icons from within System Preferences, but some of them are quite useful and that defeats the purpose of a working Menu Bar.
The first thing we recommend when you open a new Mac is to decide whether you really need some of the apps in your menu bar.
OS X Mavericks shows a few icons by default: Notifications Center, Spotlight Search, your full name, day / time, Volume indicator, WiFi, Time Machine and Bluetooth. If you do not have a Bluetooth keyboard or a multi-touch Trackpad around, there's no need to keep your Bluetooth connection active and the icon can be taken out as well.
You can go to System Preferences – Bluetooth and press the big button on the right that says "Turn Bluetooth Off." Then disable the "Show Bluetooth in menu bar" item at the bottom-left of the window.
Make sure you do the same with all the icons you don't really need up there.
After a while, once you start installing new apps you will notice that some of them will have their Menu Bar icon. Twitter, 1Password, Dropbox are just a few of those. Furthermore, there are some OS X native apps that will not disappear from the Menu Bar no matter what. Notifications Center and Spotlight are the most stubborn ones.
Introducing "Bartender" – the app that will help you get rid of those stubborn icons and organize them to your liking. This app is a little hacky so you won't find it in the Mac App Store. However, the developer's website lets you download it and try it for 4 weeks before you buy it.
Trust me! Once you set it up and learn the full value of it, there's no turning back. Full price is $15, but you can always look it up online for some discounts or promo codes.
Long story short, Bartender is described as an app that lets you organize your menu bar apps, by hiding them, rearranging them, or moving them to Bartender's Bar. Yes, we've seen ways to hide Menu bar icons before, but Bartender brings some more magic to it.
You can actually show an app in the menu bar when it updates. Let's say you want to hide the Dropbox icon, but you need to know when a new file is updated. You can make fine grain settings for each app and set it to show from 5 seconds up to 10 minutes in the Menu Bar.
Another great trick is that you can completely hide a Menu bar item. If you are an Alfred or Launchbar user, the Spotlight Icon is just in your way. The same goes for the Notifications Center Icon. With Bartender you can choose to hide the items.
And of course you can always change the settings on an app-basis if you change your mind.
Bartender is now in active development and the company behind it works to have it compatible with OS X Yosemite.