Navigation menu bar apps

What navigation menu bar apps do

Navigation apps here put somewhere on a map, or a route, or a place you are watching, into the menu bar. A small category, and a specific one: the point is checking without opening a browser and losing five minutes to it.

Anything you check often and briefly is a candidate for the menu bar. A map is an unusually good example, because opening one has a way of turning into something else.

1 listed: 1 free.

What to compare

• What it does with your location. Location is a permission macOS asks for by name. Worth knowing whether the app needs it at all, and whether anything leaves the Mac.
• Which map it draws. Apple's, a web service's, or its own. This decides how it looks, what it costs the developer, and whether it works offline.

Questions

Do these need my location?

Not all of them. Some only show a place you choose. macOS asks before any app reads where you are, and the listings link to what each developer says about it.

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.