BitBar is a free, open-source macOS menu bar extension that pipes the output of any script — shell, Python, Ruby, or otherwise — directly into a persistent menu bar item, turning your top bar into a live dashboard for anything you care to monitor.
What is BitBar?
BitBar is a lightweight macOS utility that runs scripts on a timer and displays their output as clickable menu bar items. You write (or download) a small script, drop it into BitBar's plugin folder with a filename that encodes the refresh interval, and within seconds you have a live readout sitting quietly at the top of your screen — no app to open, no window to juggle.
The project lives on GitHub and has accumulated a rich ecosystem of community-written plugins. Terminal jockeys and developers adopted it quickly because the barrier to entry is essentially zero: if you can write a five-line shell script, you can build a BitBar plugin in under ten minutes.
What does BitBar do best?
BitBar excels at surfacing custom, personal metrics that no off-the-shelf status app would ever think to track. I've used it to show the current cost of a running AWS EC2 instance, the number of unread GitHub notifications, and a one-liner countdown to a release deadline — all in the same menu bar, each refreshing on its own interval.
The output format is disarmingly simple: anything printed to stdout before the first --- separator becomes the bar label; everything after becomes dropdown menu rows. Want a clickable sub-item that opens a URL or runs a shell command? Append href= or bash= parameters to the line. The entire API fits on a single cheat-sheet, yet the expressive range is surprising.
- Supports any language that can write to stdout: bash, zsh, Python, Ruby, Swift, Node.js
- Per-plugin refresh intervals encoded directly in the filename (e.g. myscript.5m.sh refreshes every five minutes)
- Dropdown menus support sub-menus, terminal actions, clickable URLs, and image icons
- Plugin library on GitHub covers dozens of categories: network, finance, DevOps, calendar, weather
Is BitBar free?
Yes — BitBar is completely free and open-source under the MIT licence. There are no tiers, no paywalls, and no telemetry. You download the app, point it at a plugin folder, and that's the entire transaction.
It's worth noting that Mat Ryer, the original author, also released a spiritual successor called xbar, which adds a proper plugin browser UI and Apple Silicon native support. BitBar itself hasn't seen active commits in a while, so if you're on an M-series Mac and want something actively maintained, xbar is the natural upgrade path — it uses the same plugin format, so your existing scripts migrate instantly.
Who should use BitBar?
BitBar is squarely aimed at developers, sysadmins, and power users comfortable with a command line. If you reach for a terminal before you reach for a GUI, BitBar will feel like it was built exactly for you. The absence of a configuration UI isn't a bug — it's the point: everything is a plain text file, version-controllable and shareable.
Non-developers can absolutely use BitBar by installing pre-written plugins, but if you've never opened Terminal before, the initial setup may feel intimidating. For a more approachable experience, One Switch or the Shortcuts-driven menu bar extras in macOS Sequoia cover simpler display needs without a terminal in sight.
What are the best BitBar alternatives?
The closest successor is xbar (also by Mat Ryer) — same plugin format, native Apple Silicon build, and a built-in plugin browser. For users who want a more polished, GUI-first approach, Übersicht renders HTML/CSS widgets on the desktop rather than in the menu bar, which suits a different workflow. SwiftBar is another worthy fork that adds even more output directives and better performance on Apple Silicon.
If your goal is system monitoring specifically, iStatistica and Stats (open-source) offer richer visualisations out of the box. But none of them match BitBar's extensibility for bespoke, code-driven readouts.
How does BitBar compare to xbar?
xbar is the direct evolution of BitBar and wins on nearly every technical dimension: native Apple Silicon binary, an in-app plugin browser, and active maintenance. BitBar, however, remains perfectly functional on Intel Macs running macOS up to Ventura, and some users simply prefer its no-frills approach. The plugin formats are fully compatible, so switching is painless. For a new installation today, I'd reach for xbar; for an existing BitBar setup that isn't broken, there's no urgency to migrate.
