Groups

One icon that holds several shortcuts, as a menu: how to make one, what goes in it, and how it is ordered.

A group is one icon that drops a menu of shortcuts, each of them a link, an app, a file, a folder or another group. It is how a bar holds twenty things without twenty icons, and how a set of related things (one project, one client, one morning routine) stays together.

Make one

In the window where your shortcuts are, the + button has A Group. It arrives empty, with a name to type and an icon to choose.

A group is a shortcut like any other, so everything a shortcut can do it can do: it sits on a bar, it takes an icon and a colour, it answers to a number key, and it moves to another bar with Move to Bar.

Put things in it

Two ways in, and the same two ways out:

Drag. In the list of shortcuts, drag a shortcut onto the group and it moves inside. The triangle beside the group opens it, so you can drop into a place in the order.
Move to. Right-click a shortcut and Move to names every group that can hold it, by its path (Work › Clients), and Top Level puts it back in the bar. This is the way for a list too long to drag across or a group too deep to aim at.

Anything can be dropped straight into a group from outside, too: a file from the Finder or an address from a browser, dropped into the open group.

The group’s icon in the menu bar drops one row per member, in the group’s order:

The first nine members answer to their own number. Press 1 while the menu is open and the first row opens. The numbers count openable rows, so a divider is stepped over.
A group inside a group is a submenu, as deep as the groups go. A menu that grew long becomes a short one with a few folders in it.
A divider is a line between the rows. Give the divider a name and it is a heading over what follows instead. Either takes a colour, and either can be faded back. Inside a group, Add Divider Inside on its right-click menu is the quickest way to one.
Edit sits at the foot of the menu, for the group’s own settings.

Dividers stand up in the menu bar as well, as a hairline between the icons.

Choosing where a member opens

An icon in the menu bar offers Open In on a right click. A row in a dropdown cannot: a menu takes any button as a plain click. So the same menu is behind ⌥ instead.

Hold ⌥ while the group’s menu is open and every row grows an arrow with its own menu behind it: a panel, a window, your browser, or the app the system would use for a file. Let go and the rows are clicks and numbers again.

One shortcut, two groups

A group holds copies rather than references. The same folder can open in the Finder from one group and in Terminal from another, and the same site can be in two groups signed in as two different accounts.

In the group, or in the bar

A shortcut inside a group has no icon of its own, which is the point of putting it there. If you want both, keep a copy at the top level as well: the group holds copies, so the two are free to differ.

A shortcut that sits in the bar can also step out of it. Remove from Menu Bar on its right-click menu takes the icon away and leaves the shortcut where it is, still in the bar’s own menu under ⌃⌘A and in GreatBar’s menu, which holds everything on every bar. Show in Menu Bar puts it back.

Taking one with you

Export Group… writes the group out as a document, the way a whole bar can be exported. Opened on another Mac, it arrives as something to add, so a set of shortcuts that took an afternoon to build travels in one file.