The undersea cables that carry the internet, and the ships that mend them
Four hundred cables cross the ocean floor. When one breaks, a handful of ships go out to find it.
GreatBar
Everything you open every day, at the top of the screen.
GreatBar puts the websites, apps, files and folders you use most in the menu bar: one icon each, or a few behind one. A website opens in a panel under its own icon, signed in as whoever you like. An app, a file or a folder opens where it should.
Every icon in the menu bar above is one of GreatBar's, and every one is live: a site opens under its icon, a group drops its menu, the app's own icon opens the bars. ⌃⌘1 to ⌃⌘9 press them from the keyboard.
One icon each, or a few behind one
A group drops a menu.
A link, an app, a file or a folder is an icon of its own. A group is one icon that holds several, as a menu: the first nine answer to their number, a divider stands between them, and a divider with a name is a heading over what follows. An app, a file or a folder is handed to the system, which brings that app forward.
A link can go into an app rather than a browser.
A WhatsApp chat, a Slack channel or a person, a Figma file: the address opens the app, and it is filled in by name rather than typed.A shortcut can be in two groups.
A group holds copies, so the same folder opens in the Finder from one group and in Terminal from another.A file or a folder opens where you say.
Right-click its icon: Open In offers what the system would use, then everything else installed that can open it, with the folder openers grouped by what they are.Dividers stand up in the menu bar too,
as a hairline between the icons. They can take a colour and be faded back.
to see what an app does instead, or for its own menu. Any icon in the bar answers to a right click.
The panel
A website opens under its own icon.
Click, and the page is there, in a panel that hangs off the icon. It stays as you left it between opens, logins included. It starts phone-sized; an edge drags it larger, and the size is remembered.
Or drag the panel’s bottom corner, as you would in the app.
Back, forward, home.
A page you have clicked three links into has a way back to the shortcut's own address. Reload sits at the end of the address; ⌘L edits it, ⌘[ and ⌘] go back and forward, ⌘W or Escape closes.The ⋯ menu is worth opening.
Above the line, the things that happen now: open this page in a window, or hand it to your browser. Below it, the link's own settings, each taking effect on the page as you choose it.Ads and trackers are blocked
from lists that ship with the app. A link that needs them can say so.
then press ⋯ in its bar.
Accounts
Two shortcuts to one site, signed in as two people.
A session is an account: a browsing profile of its own, with its own logins. Any link that opens in the app can use one, so ChatGPT for work and ChatGPT for yourself are two icons, a session apart, and a shortcut moved between bars keeps the account it was using.
Every account gets a mark,
a letter on a colour nobody else is wearing. It sits beside the address in the panel, because two pages on one site look identical and which account they are is what tells them apart.A link can browse privately.
No cookies, no history, nothing written down; closing the panel ends it rather than leaving the page waiting with the logins still in it.An account's screen says what it is carrying:
how many shortcuts are signed in with it, how many sites have left something in it, and one button that clears the lot.
then
Windows
Or a window of its own.
A link can open in a window, which a click elsewhere does not close. It can stay above every other window, which is what a thing you are following along with wants, and a page moved between the panel and a window keeps the size it was at.
A page can keep playing after it is closed.
A radio or a video is something you started rather than something you were looking at. The icon wears a dot while it plays, so you know which one to press to get back to it.A page can be fresh every open.
A link can ask to be reloaded at its own address every time it opens, rather than coming back where you left it: what a board or a feed you keep an eye on wants.Sizes say what they are.
Phone 390 × 760, Tablet 820 × 900, Desktop 1200 × 800, or Custom, which is whatever you drag a corner to.
It stays there while you work in the app it is teaching you.
Bars
A whole menu bar, switched as a set.
Work and home, or a project at a time. A bar is a menu bar of its own; switching brings its icons and leaves the others untouched. The app's own icon opens a menu that names the bar showing and holds everything on every bar, for whatever the menu bar had no room for.
The menu stays short on purpose.
Every bar, Settings, Quit. Everything else belongs in the window where shortcuts are made: bars and sessions on the left, one bar's shortcuts in the middle, everything one shortcut does on the right, and above the list the menu bar that bar makes, which you can drag to reorder the real one.A shortcut moves to another bar
by dragging it onto that bar's name. What it was set to and the account it uses go with it.
The mark at the end of the icons.
Icons
An icon of its own.
The icon a shortcut would have anyway, a symbol, an emoji, up to three letters, or a picture at a web address. Every symbol macOS has is there, some eight thousand of them, in the categories macOS puts them in. A symbol or a letter takes a colour; a picture brings its own, and can be turned grey instead.
A link names itself.
Type the address and the name arrives from the page's own title. A name you typed is never replaced.A web link with no icon shows the site's,
fetched once and kept.
in the bar above. It arrived with the site’s own picture, and changes as you choose.
YouTubeThe site's own
Search some eight thousand symbols
Into an app, by name
A link into an app is filled in, not typed.
Add › From an App offers what the apps installed here can open, from running an Apple Shortcut to a Figma file or a Zoom meeting. A template's blanks are fields with names, and the address they build is shown as you go. A link you copied in the app fills the fields you are looking at.
In the menu bar
ChatGPT
ChatGPT (2nd)
Signed in to nothing
BBC News
WhatsApp
Slack
WhatsApp
WhatsApp
Address
whatsapp://send?phone=15551234567&text=On my wayNameWhatsApp
Icon
Show in menu barOff keeps the shortcut in this list without an icon in the menu bar.
the number, and the message to have waiting in the field
Remove Link
and any address you paste: a link copied in an app is saved as the one that opens it, and any scheme at all opens whatever answers to it.
from the WhatsApp group in the bar above: the chat is the one the link named, and the message it carried is already in the field, waiting to be sent.
Paste either address.
WhatsApp, Slack, Figma, Zoom, Spotify, Telegram, Notion, Teams, Discord and Music each have a web address and their own. GreatBar saves the one that opens the app, and says so.Slack, without knowing a single id.
Right-click a channel or a person in Slack, Copy link, and the Add menu offers it. The workspace id comes from Slack's own list on this Mac, read once.WhatsApp carries the message too,
so a shortcut opens the chat with what you always say already in the field.
Adding
Add it the way you already do.
Drag it in: an app, a file or a folder from the Finder, or an address from a browser, dropped on the app's icon in the menu bar or into the list. The Finder's own right-click menu has Add to GreatBar under Services. A link on the clipboard is offered first in the Add menu.
Sample.txtfrom the Finder
Projecta folder, from the Finder
wikipedia.orgfrom a browser's address bar
A drop asks the two things it cannot say for itself: which bar, and whether it wants an icon of its own. Keep dragging and it keeps taking them; anything can be taken back out before it is added.
Keyboard
The menu bar answers to the keyboard.
Wherever you are, without a mouse.
Press one now, or click a row. Both can be changed or turned off in Settings.
On the Mac, and nowhere else
What it keeps, and where.
Sandboxed, on purpose.
GreatBar runs inside the Mac's sandbox. Every file and folder you add is kept as a security-scoped bookmark the system hands out, never as a path, and the app can reach nothing you did not put in it.
Accounts are WebKit's own.
A session is a website data store of WebKit's, kept apart from the others by an identifier. Two shortcuts to one site signed in as two people are two stores; deleting a session deletes its data, and Private keeps nothing at all.
Ads and trackers are blocked.
From EasyList and EasyPrivacy, which ship with the app, compiled into the content rules WebKit applies and refreshed with each update. On by default for pages that open in GreatBar; a link that needs its ads can say so in its own settings. A link that opens in your browser is your browser's business.
Nothing leaves the Mac.
The app keeps no account and asks for none. It reads the pages you open, and a site's own icon once. Updates come from this site, signed with a key only this app accepts.
Questions
What can go in the menu bar?
A link, an app, a file or a folder, each as an icon of its own, and groups that drop a menu of shortcuts. A link can be any address, so a deep link (figma://…, zoommtg://…) opens in its app. Dividers stand between the icons; a divider with a name is a heading in a group's menu.
Where does a link open?
In a panel under its own icon, in a window of its own, or in your browser, which one you can name. Each link decides for itself; the panel and the window start phone-sized, an edge drags them larger, and the size is remembered.
How are two accounts on one site kept apart?
By sessions. A session is a browsing profile of its own, with its own logins, and any link that opens in the app can use one. Two shortcuts to the same site with two sessions are two accounts, whether they sit on one bar or on two. A link can also browse privately: no cookies, no history, nothing written down, and closing the panel ends it.
What is a bar?
A whole menu bar of its own, switched as a set: work and home, or a project at a time. The app's own menu names the one showing and lists the others; ⌃⌘← and ⌃⌘→ walk them. Nothing in the other bars is touched.
What happens to a page when I close the panel?
It stays as you left it, logins included, and is there again on the next click. A link can ask to be reloaded at its own address every time it opens instead, and a page that is playing something can keep playing behind a closed panel; its icon wears a dot while it does.
Why does a link into Slack not ask for an id?
In Slack, right-click a channel or a person and choose Copy link; GreatBar's Add menu offers what you copied. Slack's link names the workspace by its domain rather than by the id its own links want, so the first time, GreatBar offers to read Slack's own list of your workspaces, once, from your Mac. The link is saved as a slack:// one, so it opens the app rather than a browser tab that hands it on.
A link I copied in WhatsApp became a whatsapp:// address. Why?
WhatsApp, Slack, Figma, Zoom, Spotify, Telegram, Notion, Teams, Discord and Music each have two names for the same thing: the web address you can copy, and their own address that opens the app. GreatBar saves the one that opens the app, says which app in the editor, and lets you keep the web address instead if that is what you meant. Only when the app is installed.
Which browser does a link open in?
The one this Mac already keeps as its default, unless the link names another from the browsers installed. A page opened in GreatBar itself can say which browser it is, for the sites that ask: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, or Safari on an iPad or an iPhone.
What if I have more than nine icons?
The first nine answer to ⌃⌘1 through ⌃⌘9, counting from the left and stepping over the lines between them. The nine after that answer to the same digits with ⌥ held as well, so the tenth icon is ⌥⌃⌘1. Not ⇧, because ⇧⌘3, 4 and 5 take screenshots and macOS keeps those keys whatever else is held with them. Hold the modifiers for a moment and every icon says which number it is, so nothing has to be counted. The pair can be changed, or turned off, in Settings.
Does it need an account, or send anything anywhere?
No account. Nothing is sent: the pages you open are yours, a site's icon is fetched once, and updates are checked against this site. The app is sandboxed, signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple.
When does it ship?
When it is done. Write to support@greatpixels.com and you will hear when it does.
One click from the top of the screen.
The things you open every day, in the menu bar, the way you want them opened.
Download GreatBar