Broomstick
Broomstick is the easiest way to hide menubar icons that you don’t like. While most apps that create a menubar icon allow you to hide it, some apps don’t provide this option. Broomstick lets you take back control of your menubar!
Broomstick is compatible with Snow Leopard, Lion, and Mountain Lion. It is licensed under the Zibity Software Licence.
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Version 0.91 (Beta) is the latest version of Broomstick, released on 14 November 2012. Broomstick contains an auto-updater, so you never have to worry about checking for updates - it’ll all happen automatically.
Release notes for v0.91:
- Updates to be compatible with new Flux and Dropbox updates. It seems that on some systems Broomstick takes a long time to un-hide the Dropbox icon, but if you give it enough time (2-3 mins), it gets there eventually.
Supported Apps
Broomstick can currently hide the following apps: Air Video Server, Avira, BetterTouchTool, Boom, CPU Speed Accelerator, Caffeine, Chronicle Mini, ChronoSync, Click.to, CloudApp, CrashPlan, Dimmer, DropCopy, Dropbox, Droplr, Evernote, Flutter, Flux, FullControlHelper, Garmin ANT Agent, GrabBox, GrabBox2, Growl, GrowlTunes, Hiss, Insync, Kuvva, Last.fm, LogMeIn, LogMeIn Hamach, Memeo Backup, MiddleClick, MuteCon, NoSleepHelper, Nocturne, OpenDNS Updater, PleaseSleep, PuntoSwitcher, Quiet Read, RemotelessHelper, Seamless, SnagIt, Splashtop Streamer, Spotlight, ToDoHelper, Wakoopa Tracker, Wallpaper Clocks, iTeleport Connect. If you would like to request another app be able to be hidden, then this can be done from within Broomstick, or through this form.
For every app that is requested to be added to Broomstick, I have to manually go and download the app, then open it up, and find its icon files before it can be included. This is a quick thing to do, but when I’ve got 500+ requests, it takes ages to work through the list. You can help speed up the process by finding the icon information for me! For more information, please visit the Broomstick Crowdsourcing page.
How does Broomstick work?
Broomstick works by changing the permissions of the application’s files so that the application can not display its icon. Some apps, such as Dropbox, do not display anything in the menubar, however other apps just display a blank space. To get around this, you can use the menubar order customisation feature of Broomstick to ensure that your menubar remains beautiful.
Please be aware that running running any “Repair Permissions” scripts on you Mac may reshow some icons hidden my Broomstick. If they are shown again, you can easily hide them with Broomstick.
Screenshots
Anonymous Usage Statistics
Broomstick collects anonymous usage statistics when it is used. The only information that is submitted is your version number of Mac OS X (so that I know what versions I still need to provide support for), your computer’s UUID (so that I know how many users I’ve got), the version number of your copy of Broomstick (so that I know if the auto-updater is working), the names of the applications that you have hidden or shown (so that I know which online communities I should be marketing my app towards), and the name of the country you are in (so that I know which languages I need to provide support for).
You can view all of this raw data here
This information is very valuable to me, however if you really want to disable the collection of this information, you can do so by running defaults write com.zibity.broomstick stats no in Terminal.
Collecting anonymous usage statistics means that I can make pretty charts like this one:
Disclaimer
This application is provided “as is”. I do not guarantee that I will continue supporting this application. I make no warranty that it will function or continue to function as time goes on. If something goes wrong with your computer, with your applications, with your files, with your mind, or with anything else as either a direct or indirect consequence of using this application, it is not my fault and I claim no responsibility for anything, at all, ever, anywhere, at any time. Basically, whatever happens, it’s not my fault. Do not use Broomstick if you do not accept this. That said, everything should work, and has been working, just fine.
