Shortcuts
The six kinds of shortcut, the editor that shapes one, and what a right click on an icon offers.
Everything on a bar is a shortcut, and a shortcut is one of six kinds. What the editor asks depends on which one it is: a link is asked where it opens and whose account it uses, a folder is asked which app should open it, a divider is asked what colour it is.
The six kinds
| Kind | What a click does |
|---|---|
| Link | Opens a page in a panel, in a window, or in your browser. A deep link like slack://… opens its app instead. |
| App | Brings the app forward, or starts it, exactly as the Dock would. |
| File | Opens the file, in the app macOS would use or in one you name. |
| Folder | Opens the folder in the Finder, a terminal, an editor or a Git client. |
| Group | Drops a menu of shortcuts. See Groups. |
| Divider | Draws nothing to click: a hairline between icons, or a heading inside a menu. |
The editor
Select a shortcut in GreatBar’s window and its editor is on the right. There is no Save button: what you change is written as you change it, and the menu bar follows at once.
Name. A web link takes the page’s own title if you have not typed one. The small ✕ beside the field hands the name back, and the address fills it in again from the page.
Icon. Opens the picker: the icon it would have anyway, a symbol, an emoji, up to three letters, or a picture from the web. See Icons.
Show in menu bar. Off keeps the shortcut in the list without an icon of its own. It is still there in GreatBar’s own menu, and still answers to nothing else. A shortcut inside a group has no such switch: it is behind the group’s icon by definition.
Remove. The last section of the form, deliberately far from everything else.
What a link is asked
Address. A web address, or a deep link. Type example.com and GreatBar makes it a
proper address. If the address belongs to an app on this Mac, a row appears saying so
(Open in Figma, say) and the link is saved as the one that opens the app; turn it off
and the web address is kept instead. See Links into apps.
Opens in. Default, In a panel, In a window, or In your browser. The default itself is whatever you set in Settings, and the row says which that is.
Browser. Only for a link that opens in your browser: which one, from the browsers installed here, whatever the Mac opens the rest in.
Session. Only for a link that opens in GreatBar: which account it signs in as, or Private. See Accounts.
Under those, a link that opens in GreatBar carries the page settings: appearance, zoom, where new windows go, browser agent, size, always on top, keep playing, reload every open, ad blocking. Each is described where it stands, and each starts at Default, which means the app’s setting rather than a value copied at the moment you made the shortcut. Websites in a panel goes through them one at a time.
What a file or a folder is asked
Open in. For a file, what macOS itself would use first, then the other apps that can open it. For a folder: the Finder, a terminal (Terminal, iTerm, Warp, Ghostty, kitty), an editor (VS Code, Cursor, Zed, Xcode, Sublime Text, Nova, BBEdit) or a Git client (Fork, Tower, GitHub Desktop, Sourcetree, Sublime Merge), whichever of those are installed. Other… picks any app on the Mac.
The same list is on the icon’s right-click menu under Open In, and choosing there opens it and remembers. Inside a group’s menu, hold ⌥ and every row has the same menu behind it.
GreatBar is sandboxed, so a file or folder is kept as the security-scoped bookmark macOS hands out when you pick it, never as a path. The shortcut survives the file being renamed or moved. It cannot survive the file being deleted, and a file on a disk that is not connected cannot be opened until it is.
What a divider is asked
Style. Line or Heading. A heading is a divider with a name, and stands over the shortcuts under it in a menu.
Colour and opacity. Left alone, a divider looks like every other line on the screen and follows dark and light with them. Fading one is how a line separates without drawing the eye.
The right-click menu on an icon
Every icon in the menu bar answers to a right click, and so does every row in a group’s menu with ⌥ held:
- Where it opens, at the top: choosing a row opens it there and keeps the choice.
- Open In, for a file or a folder.
- Shortcut Settings: session, size, browser agent, page appearance, zoom, links that open a new window, block ads, reload every open, keep playing, always on top.
- Remove from Menu Bar, or Show in Menu Bar.
- Edit Shortcut…, which opens the window at this shortcut.
Moving, copying and taking one with you
- Drag a shortcut in the list to reorder it, onto a group to move it inside, or onto another bar’s name in the sidebar to move it there.
- Move to on the right-click menu names every group that can hold it, by its path (Work › Clients), with Top Level to bring it back out.
- Move to Bar sends it to another bar, with everything it was set to.
- Export Group… writes a group out as a
.greatbardocument to open on another Mac.
The strip above the list is a picture of the real menu bar, and dragging in it reorders the real one.