[sagacity]

This is pretty nice, but why do a lot of Mac apps insist on living in the menu bar?

[mft_]

Agreed, especially for something like this that might get used a handful of times (I’m assuming most people don’t have myriad cables or want to check them regularly?)

The problem of course is that on my 14” screen the area to the right of the notch is already close to full and I don’t even have that many things there…

[sleepingNomad]

It works for me, but I understand for others it might not. So, there's now a "Show in menu bar" toggle in Settings. Turn it off and WhatCable runs as a regular Dock app with a normal window instead.

[poisonborz]

Making 1 click to access is faster than typing the app name in finder. Dock is usually full and used for different type of apps. Makes also constantly visible output possible with standard ui patterns.

[Someone]

And ‘every’ Mac developer thinks people will want to run their tool all the time.

For this kind of read-only tool, I doubt that’s the case. A regular application probably serves most users better.

Also, if you want users to have the option of permanently displaying this kind of info, a desktop widget (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/widgetkit) may be a better option than a menu bar item.

[sgt]

Exactly, this should just be a regular app with an optional menu bar option for those who want to switch it on.

[sleepingNomad]

I like this idea.

[lxgr]

> Dock is usually full

My menu bar is also full and, unlike the Dock, I can’t resize it to fit more.

[poisonborz]

You can put it in a secondary onclick taskbar with Ice (similarly to Windows)

[alexcroox]

Just a heads up Ice is abandoned and broken on upcoming versions of MacOS. I still need to look into an alternative

[borski]

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/06/alternatives-bartender-...

[philsnow]

Thank you for posting this, I've been increasingly frustrated with ice recently and have been considering paying for bartender, now i won't.

[wlonkly]

Thaw is a fork of Ice which is maintained and woks on Tahoe.

https://github.com/stonerl/Thaw

[lxgr]

There's also Bartender, Hidden Bar etc., but they all come with some downsides.

I just don't get why Apple doesn't recognize this as a problem. Do the engineers working on macOS all have two of these 5:1 aspect ratio ultra wide monitors!?

[pndy]

Whenever I look at my partner's Macbook I'm having a flashbacks from Win9x/2000 times when tray area was filled up.

But Microsoft managed to deal with that issue - years ago. With XP they introduced collapsible tray area and later, it also become possible to rearrange icons.

Somehow for Apple the problem doesn't exist or they assume that their users will choose a 3rd party solution. Frankly, it's them who should provide the solution straight within the operating system. Especially when Apple computers revolve nowadays more around laptops which by definition have smaller display area.

[xp84]

Worse - even if you have two, Apple just duplicates the menu bar on both screens.

Especially with the abomination that is The Notch, the menu bar has been overcrowded for years. No offense to OP. I’m talking about the 5 or so items I can’t get rid of in there.

[efskap]

Sure you can.

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 2

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 2

Replace write with delete to undo.

[UqWBcuFx6NV4r]

OK, thanks. We understand what a menu bar is.

How is this conducive to the typical usage pattern of an app like this?

[kranner]

For some reason the app supports a separate standalone window mode as well [0]. It's not clear why the developer took the trouble to support two different modes when the menubar mode doesn't seem to add anything (like a live-updating icon for throughput).

Well, I can think of one reason why it wasn't that much more trouble. François Chollet had a nice tweet [1] on why removing human cognitive friction is resulting in needless software complexity.

[0] https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable/blob/main/Sources/...

[1] https://x.com/fchollet/status/2045929951539707957

[jaffee]

> removing human cognitive friction is resulting in needless software complexity

This is kind of a hilarious statement just on the surface. Isn't removing burden from humans the whole purpose of software? How can you call the complexity "needless"?!

(the actual tweet seems to go into a bit more detail around being incentivized to find good abstractions)

[kranner]

I think you're conflating the burden of creation with the burden of relevance, suitability, usability and usefulness of the created artifact. The more the person in charge is disengaged, the sloppier the output is likely to be.

[hdndjsbbs]

Making it trivial to generate software is making people turn their brains off. They don't think through the details and accept the "default" from an LLM which has no concern for the user experience.

[wlonkly]

> It's not clear why

People asked for it in these comments here and the developer added it.

[kranner]

Thanks, from the git log I see it was committed 20 minutes before my comment. I was going by the HN title and description and missed those comments.

[awakeasleep]

Are you saying you wish this was a desktop app and you would just open it occasionally when curious?

If so, it feels like a needlessly indirect and combative way to go about it.

[teh_klev]

Why is it "combative"? Seems like a needlessly hyperbolic description of launching a desktop app.

[johanyc]

Spotlight exists. Typing is much faster than moving your cursor to a small target like a menu bar item.

[_Microft]

Is it not rather useful in this particular case? You will see the reported capabilities whenever you plug in a cable. Or do people rather want to diagnose and label their cables just once?

[sagacity]

Sure, but do you diagnose cables so often that you need a permanent icon in the menu bar?

Following that logic, every application you use more than a handful of times should live there.

Anyway. I'm not trying to argue, I think this is a neat tool, but when the Windows tray got bloated with icons people used to complain about it.

[jrochkind1]

oh no you're right, my menu bar is full already.