14 DAY TRIAL // OS X is highly customizable and you can choose what you want to see and where. Even the dock that plays such an important part in nearly all every day activities can simply be hidden and never interacted with. The only exception to this rule is the Menubar, which is always present at the top of the screen. The Menubar is where all applications show their menus and as such its contents change whenever you change the application you are working in. However, that little bar can also house items, which are like third party menus and which can be shown and hidden at your desire, but will always be visible in all applications. Menubar items can serve a wide variety of purposes, from showing the date and time, to letting you choose network connections or keyboard layout, and many applications offer their own. In fact, you can easily have so many menubar items that it is not possible to display them all, especially in applications that have lots of menus. When that happens you need something like Menuola.
What it does Nearly all applications out there do something, whether it is a vast array of functions or just a simple one. Menuola is one of those rare applications that do nothing, this being the main reason why it is practical. It may sound nonsensical, but the only purpose of this program is to simply run so that when you switch to it, your menubar can display more menubar items.
Working with it Working with an application that does nothing is very simple, surprisingly enough. After downloading the disk image and dragging the application to wherever you would like to keep it, you just double click to launch it. Amazingly enough, despite doing nothing and being practically a dead application, it takes up a surprising amount of disk space, nearly 8 MB, that I simply cannot imagine what it uses for.
Once launched, Menuola will present you with its splash screen and then proceed to do absolutely nothing. The key here is the fact that beside the application's menu, that all OS X programs have, Menuola has no other menus, leaving the menubar free for all your menubar items. Most applications take up about a third to a half of the menubar with their menus, some even going as far as to take up the entire thing not even leaving enough space for the clock, but Menuola takes up next to nothing. While you have it selected, the entire menubar is free for that horde of menubar items that you like having around.
Once you are done working with the menubar items, you can just change back to the application you were working on and be on your way. Should you ever need to access the menubar items again, simply change back to Menuola.
Menubar item woes Menubar items, much like the dock fall under the individual's preference. Just like some people have a clean dock with nothing except the running applications and other have a full dock with each and every application on their computer, the number of menubar items a use has will vary. Additionally, because of the way OS X uses the menubar, the space available for them will also vary, depending on each application. Complex programs such as Maya can take up the entire menubar pushing everything aside, even the clock.
Because of this behavior, menubar items to the far left often get hidden by the menus, and because of this, Apple left the user the ability to reorder menubar items by dragging them with Command pressed, so that you can place the more important ones of the right. Unfortunately, not every menubar item out there is the real deal and some developers fake it leaving you with fakes that although look and behave normally cannot be reordered. To make matters even worse, these fake menubar items are always placed automatically on the far left.
Given all these factors, it is quite easy to find yourself in a situation where you need to access a menubar item that is being hidden by the menus of the current application. There is always the possibility of changing to another application that has fewer menus, but this is very susceptible to trial and error. Menuola guarantees as much free menubar space as possible and can be easy activated and then hidden.
More is more For an application that is designed to clear up the menubar, Menuola does take up quite a bit of it with its application menu. While I can't say that I can ever see myself actually needing that extra bit of space, some might.
More importantly, a big issue with Menuola is the way you interact with it. If you are going after a menubar item only to find that it is hidden, you will already be with your hand on the mouse and the cursor at the top of the screen. Having to go all the way to the bottom of the screen to click on Menuola and then going back up to click on the item you wanted originally is bad. It might not sound like much, but do this ten times and you start to notice the delay and redundancy. What is really missing here is a shortcut somewhere on the left side of the keyboard to automatically switch to Menuola.
The Good Excellent for giving you more menubar legroom so you can get to those menubar items of the far left.
The Bad Traveling from the top of the screen to the bottom and then up again is a pain, a keyboard shortcut would cut this down significantly.
The Truth This little application that does nothing is a gem for people who like hoarding menubar items. For everyone else, it would be little more than a novelty.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
