Display menu bar apps

What display menu bar apps do

Display apps change what the screen does: brightness past the slider's end, colour temperature after dark, an external monitor that macOS gives you almost no control over, or the arrangement of windows across the ones you have.

These are adjustments made ten times a day in reaction to a room, a time or a task. Anything that takes more than a glance and a drag is something you stop doing and put up with instead.

6 listed: 4 free and 2 paid.

What to compare

• Built-in screen, external, or both. macOS controls its own display well and an external one barely at all. An app that handles both is solving a different problem from one that handles the laptop screen alone.
• How it dims. Below the lowest native brightness, some apps lay a dark layer over the screen and some drive the hardware. The first works everywhere and affects screenshots and screen sharing; the second does not, and does not work on every monitor.
• What it asks for. Changing colours, reading the screen and moving windows need different permissions. Worth seeing which are asked for and why before granting them.
• Whether it follows the sun. On its own at dusk, or only when you move a slider. Both are preferences rather than features, and switching one off is easier than remembering to switch one on.

Questions

Can anything control an external monitor's brightness?

Sometimes. Many monitors accept brightness commands over the display cable, and apps that use that change the panel itself. Monitors that do not accept them can only be dimmed by an overlay, which looks the same and is not: the panel is still at full output.

Is Night Shift not enough?

For warming the colour at night, often yes. These go further in ways macOS does not offer, such as going below the minimum brightness or applying something per display, and that is the reason to add one rather than the whole reason.

What is a menu bar app?

An app that lives in the strip along the top of the screen instead of the Dock. It has an icon there, and clicking it drops down a small window. Most have no main window at all, so they stay out of the way until you want them and never appear when you switch apps.

Do menu bar apps slow a Mac down?

Each one is a running process, so a dozen of them is a dozen processes. Most sit idle and cost close to nothing. The ones worth watching are those doing work when you are not looking: reading the screen, polling a server, or watching every file you save. Activity Monitor will tell you which is which on your own machine.

My menu bar is full. What then?

macOS drops icons that no longer fit, and on a Mac with a notch there is less room than there looks. Holding Command and dragging rearranges them, so the ones you use can be kept to the left of the crowd. There are also apps whose whole job is hiding and grouping the rest, listed here under Utilities.