SwiftBar vs xbar

SwiftBar

Powerful macOS menu bar customization tool (by swiftbar)

Source Code

swiftbar.app

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xbar

An tiny XCB information bar. (by mcpcpc)

Xcb Bar Statusbar

Source Code

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SwiftBar		xbar
	Project
18	Mentions	2
2,678	Stars	8
4.5%	Growth	-
6.7	Activity	0.0
about 1 month ago	Latest Commit	over 3 years ago
Swift	Language	C
MIT License	License	MIT License

The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

SwiftBar

Posts with mentions or reviews of SwiftBar. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-06-17.

Show HN: SwiftBar 2.0 Powerful macOS menu bar customization tool
1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Jan 2024
Monitoring menu bar icons (terminal, plist, etc)?
1 project | /r/macsysadmin | 19 Nov 2023

I don't know if this supports your use case, but look into SwiftBar. https://github.com/swiftbar/SwiftBar
Mac app to display JSON data in menu bar?
2 projects | /r/macapps | 17 Jun 2023
Bug Fixes or Alternatives?
1 project | /r/GeekTool | 20 Apr 2023

I’m in a similar boat. Only one external monitor on an M1 Studio. Every time I restart, GeekTool cannot find the monitor, so I have to manually move all 10 of my geeklets to the main monitor. I looked into moving them via script, but was unsuccessful because the monitor id was inexplicably not identical on geektool’s side between launches (I gather this is a known issue from the developer). Sadly, I have been unable to find an app that sufficiently replicates GeekTools functionality. That being said, I have moved some of my scripts to SwiftBar where they are accessible via the menu bar instead of displayed on the desktop. Works fine for simple text stuff, but not my more graphical calendar. I’m saving this post though, because I still want a true fix/replacement for GeekTool.
What are the not-so-obvious tools that you don't want to miss?
16 projects | /r/ExperiencedDevs | 16 Feb 2023
A curated directory of 700 Mac menu bar apps
10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Nov 2022
Apps that should be paid, but are not (Part 3)
8 projects | /r/macapps | 19 Nov 2022

https://github.com/swiftbar/SwiftBar - Powerful macOS menu bar customization tool
Quick check of gateway metrics - MacOS only
2 projects | /r/tmobileisp | 6 Aug 2022

As many of you, I obsess over the current metrics of my TMHI modem. Opening the app to check it is too cumbersome. On MacOS there is a cool free utility that allows simple scripts to run in the menu called SwiftBar (get it here: https://github.com/swiftbar/SwiftBar )
Looking for an app that sits in the menu bar. When I click it, it pops up a window with my custom text and in my custom styling. Does this exist?
1 project | /r/MacOS | 3 Aug 2022

Maybe swiftbar?
Is there a way to turn the menu bar into one long scrolling stock ticker?
1 project | /r/MacOS | 23 Jul 2022

I am sure you could create a stock ticker with SwiftBar https://swiftbar.app. SwiftBar has plugins which write to the menubar using shell scripts. And there are already some stock ticker plugins - I am sure you could modify one of them to meet your needs.

xbar

Posts with mentions or reviews of xbar. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2020-12-28.