- I am the target audience for this, from a UX and tech perspective. It addresses a problem I have and for which I periodically audition solutions.
A subscription for a menu bar, though, kills it for me. I have apps on Macs that are over 20 years old. Some of those companies don’t exist anymore. I’m not going to risk paying $100 for a decade of your app and hope that your company, or your goodwill, stays around that long.
- I think that’s a fair question.
My thinking is pretty simple: most people will probably choose the basic 2-device plan, which works out to about $0.85 per month. For an app like this, I think that is a reasonable price.
Another reason is that a lot of Mac apps charge a one-time fee upfront, but then require paid upgrades later. In practice, that often ends up being similar to paying for a few years of ongoing support anyway.
I also think a low-cost subscription sets a clearer expectation that the app will continue to be maintained and kept working as macOS changes. For software like this, where OS updates can easily break things, that felt like the more honest model.
- Adding on to this, apps that hook into window management and multi-monitor behavior can break in subtle ways over time. I ran into some of that with uBar on my setup, especially around multi-monitor use and waking from sleep, and I wanted boringBar’s pricing to match the expectation of continued support and fixes.
- I 100% understand why you are using a subscription-based model. It makes sense, and I agree it's the most honest model given that you have to continually support it and you don't want to have to either over-promise on extended support, and offer refunds if you can't fulfill that promise.
I just hate managing subscriptions.
If you gave me the option to require manual subscription renewal, rather than auto-renewal, I would 100% buy this right now. Basically allow me to purchase for 1 year then click a button to confirm that I'm still getting value out of the product. If I don't click that button then you should assume I'm no longer interested and cancel my subscription.
(I don't like using my mac but sometimes I have to use it for work, and I wish I had this.)
- Fair point. The billing part of it is managed via Stripe - I'll put up the update/cancel subscription part on the Customer Billing panel soon.
- Consider adding a lifetime option next to your sub options.
Consumer purchase behavior is highly impulsive and irrational. Businesses are very rational and like subs, but for many people, subscription fatigue is a real thing. Make the lifetime option 3-10x the annual rate; done. People will buy it. In my app I set it at 3x (but my annual sub is quite high; 6/mo, 30/y or 100 lifetime) but other apps, like Halide, have 12/y or 80 lifetime last I checked.
You get guaranteed revenue, and you get it upfront - better for cashflow. And you can always tell customers “if you don’t like subs buy the lifetime option”.
- > Consumer purchase behavior is highly impulsive and irrational.
This is correct. It’s quite possible to both satisfy more customers and work within your constraints.
Eg $30 bucks lifetime would be nice. You could put it in small print below the main pricing to avoid decision fatigue and keep things streamlined for subs.
Often those early adopters appreciate and become advocates. Subs fatigue is a real thing
- It is utterly bizarre that you portray consumers as irrational for not wanting subs and businesses as rational for wanting subs. Both are rational in their own interests: businesses want subs because it means more money and more control in the long run. Consumers don't want subs because it means paying more money in the long run and eventually having their software taken away from them if the company goes under, makes an anti-consumer update, etc. Consumers are not irrational just because they don't want to give you money every month forever.
- It's a tiny market. Why would they bother if only 10 people will give them $10?
- I have the same bias as the parent. I'd rather pay $50 one time than $9 a year even if I throw it away after 4 years.
But the main reason I wouldn't install it despite being happy customizing linux is that it's yet another black box I need to trust and that knows way too much. It's really insane how much you need to compromise your security on macos to have a decent developer experience.
- Apparently not that tiny, if a competitor has the same product priced at $30 and is currently on to version 4 after 12+ years in business!
- They can set whatever price they want. And in business... for a micro saas? Is that just... waiting?
- While I don't use a Mac as my primary anymore, I'm surprised I like the look of this! It actually looks quite Mac-like as well.
Subscription is a big nope here, though. Especially for Mac software, I'd expect something where you pay for one major version, that is guaranteed to works on specific macOS versions, and gets minor bugfix updates too. But maybe the next macOS version requires a newer major version update to run, in which case you pay an upgrade fee to buy the next major version - or maybe the next major version has new features you might want to upgrade to as well.
My old Macs are stuck on 10.13, and I see Ubar mentioned elsewhere in this thread and that it's still compatible with 10.13. I might consider the $30 one off price to buy Ubar and keep it forever, but I wouldn't do a $10 subscription.
- Agreed. The idea of having to pay for non-cloud based software in perpetuity forever, and having it stop working the very second I discontinue paying is a hard no for me.
OP, go with the JetBrains model. You can still offer a monthly subscription, but also provide an annual option where you pay up front for a year. After that year, it reverts to a fallback license for the specific version that was current during that period. It’s a good approach.
- Please don't overindex on this comment OP, $10 a year is completely reasonable and the status quo they describe has killed so much software for so little benefit
It's a subscription with extra steps and worse retention.
- I didn't downvote, but just to be clear - I'm not saying $10 for lifetime updates. Lifetime updates are a terrible idea and, yes, that does kill off software.
$10 is too low for a one-off purchase as well, I'm not saying to lowball the price. $29 for a small utility could be reasonable, and that gives you some room to offer discount pricing / sales if you want. As for major version upgrades, I'd be imagining a typical 50% off, $15 to buy an upgrade to v2 if the customer wants it. Of course, not every customer will want that.
You could offer both a subscription and a one-off purchase. It might put off some customers that you're even offering a subscription, but at least then you're offering everyone what they might want. And if you offer both, you'll have real data on what customers actually prefer, if you don't have that data already.
And as others have said - it's their business, they can choose their sales model! Offered only as a friendly suggestion and potential customer feedback.
- Why not offer both?
I personally dislike subscriptions to the point where I’d gladly pay more to own, and as this thread shows, I’m not alone.
So why not offer both?
- Why offer both?
Some people will take the subscription with extra steps and worse retention and I'm saying the product will be worse off for it. Why not just offer the thing with the simpler messaging*, better retention, and better outlook for actually being supported down the road even if it's not a massive success?
* 1 year = 365 days, not when a new major version is subjectively justified
Honestly anyone who'd over index on people claiming they'd pay except $10 a year is just too much for a major utility or subscriptions are just too exotic for them is doomed unless they learn about conversion rates: I don't get the vibe OP is unaware though based on their comments here.
- This reminds me of when I got my Vaxx subscription after the 5th booster.
- Subscription on something like this is goofy, and extra subscription per seat even for personal is goofier. For free, I can use Alfred/Raycast, Aerospace, and either sketchybar or zebar and have all this functionality executed even more skillfully and ergonomically. If you want to throw money into it, Alfred power pack is £34 and supports a great company with a lifetime purchase.
But I also understand I’m not the target audience for this, and some of my coworkers that wanted a Mac because “it’s a Mac” and now compare everything to Windows would probably use it. I’ll just have to feel bad for their wallets.
- Hi!
Over the years, I've tried several of these dock replacement apps. The one that stuck the longest was uBar (which I used with a setup similar to what you have here, emulating a "windows taskbar".
I've hit issues with most of them that forced me to move back to the normal Dock, but the number one issue has always been around notification badges: they always seemed to break in strange ways.
For example, can your dock show badges for iMessage if the app isn't open? Does it get the updated badge count without me opening it? Say I receive a SMS/iMessage, does it instantly show a counter next to the unopened pinned messages app? None of the other apps successfully did this when I tried them...
I don't know if there are other apps like this, but iMessage was by far the biggest offender. Perhaps system settings too?
P.S.: Congrats on the launch :)
P.P.S.: As others have said, I think a subscription for this will rub many people the wrong way (I am one of them). If I'm paying for a subscription, I expect this to be pretty bug-free and have at least monthly updates. I wouldn't ask this of other subscription-based apps, but for one that replaces a system-level component and wants me to keep paying, you bet I am holding it to a high standard! I've wasted too much money on other replacements and gotten very little value out of that.
- Hi there - I ran into the same issue myself, but sadly I still haven't found a way to show the badge count without opening the app. I'm still experimenting with it.
I expected some pushback on subscriptions, but after trying uBar and running into quite a few issues with it I wanted to build something that feels reliable and polished. I’m pretty much all-in on the Apple ecosystem now, even though I only switched ~6 months ago. My intention is to keep supporting boringBar regularly, as I use it every day myself.
- I love that you've made this, but in a world of never ending subscriptions, a subscription to a taskbar is just not something I (or many I imagine) can justify - no matter how low the price.
We really have entered the age of everything being a subscription.
- One-time fee? I would be onboard instantly. Monthly fee? For what exactly? There is no recurring cost like server space or anything else. Nope, you lost me as a customer. For good.
- Ah, good old Apple, where for only $9.99 a month, you can experience what Linux offered for free 15+ years ago.
- Not really true if what you want is a full macOS-style desktop experience with a few choice features from elsewhere bolted on. Linux desktops are predominantly Windows-style or minimal tiling thing, with the exceptions (GNOME, Pantheon) bearing only surface-level Mac aesthetics and being more comparable to superpowered tablet OS experiences.
- Can you expand a bit on what you mean by "Superpowered tablet os"?
I'm tend to think of it as a server os with a DE, but as a backend developer I'm probably biased.
- MacOS is neutered for any advanced or even power user compared to practically any Linux desktop experience. Trying to just resize or remove a window should convince you of that instantly.
- Gnome is a pretty big exception lol. Considering it's the dominant DE.
Also tablet OS? Gnome is keyboard driven with tiling features OOTB...
- Fantastic work, but ubar is going to eat your lunch with that subscription
- Looks excellent but I can’t wrap my head around how this is a subscription. Pricing the app even at a higher range ($40-50), one—time payment makes way more sense.
You could even require paying for “upgrades” for major updates in the future. (Similar to that of Sketch or some apps made by Panic)
- There are MORE apps that have a better reputation like sidebar , dock fix , active dock (has been around for years and years) , and a subscription does not make sense since most can be done for free like window previews with dock door , group windows by app is free in desktop and dock settings for Mission Control , the native dock can also do many things like notification badges, click to show desktop or use a hot corner or trackpad gesture , pin apps in the dock , there are a billion app launchers , spotlight is built in . Most people will stay away from subscriptions as I have observed in the comment below (Pls be nice I’m new here and I don’t know how to comment properly )
- +1 to amplify the voice that hates a subscription to a taskbar. If it was €15 one time I would’ve instantly bought it.
- > I built boringBar so I would not have to use the Dock
Does anybody really use the dock as a an app switcher? MacOS is built around shortcuts, alt-tab, show spaces, etc. The dock is there for starting apps – which you can also do via spotlight, and as a “favorites” list after you remove all the built-ins.
- I personally use Raycast, which has a Switch Windows global hotkey (Opt + W) that brings up a list of all active windows and apps. From there, you can start typing part of the window title and hit Enter to bring the corresponding window to the foreground.
Slightly related but AltTab is also a nice window switcher with built-in thumbnail previews if you prefer being able to tab by "window" and not by "process" (aka more like Windows).
- I see a lot of people treat the dock like the Windows taskbar. They have it filled with as many apps as they can fit in it and leave it on-screen. I used to use the dock like that when I first started using macOS. Now it lives off the left edge of the screen and spends most of the time hidden. I can open any app I need with Spotlight and Mission Control, CMD+Tab, and moving between virtual desktops lets me move around my currently open apps.
- I'm not the target audience for this, but THANK YOU for putting a description in the title, instead of letting me eagerly click it thinking it might be a speeds/feeds/stickout calculator for a lathe boring bar or something.
- I’m totally a target audience here. I’ve been trying so many different app switcher applications. My latest favorite one is “flashspace”. I would love that kind of functionality be part of this too if possible. Regardless I’ll give it a shot for a few weeks and see if it works for me. Thanks for sharing!
- I use uBar for this: https://ubarapp.com but this looks like a nice lightweight alternative!
- https://lawand.io/taskbar/ as well
and https://noteifyapp.com/activedock/, which is less extreme but has a start menu-like launcher option
Both have one-time/lifetime purchase options. Taskbar is $25 one-time with a free but expiring older version. ActiveDock's one-time prices are $15 (1 year of updates, but usable forever) and $60 (lifetime updates).
- Another alternative is https://hypercritical.co/switchglass/ ($10 upfront) really well done.
- uBar looks amazing as well, and it’s not a subscription, I really like boringBar but can’t justify a subscription tho
- Both are under 10MB, So I don't think there would be much difference.
- I meant more in terms of featureset. uBar has a lot of features and it takes a while to get a setup that works well.
Once it's set up, though, it's pretty rock solid.
- I'm with other people here. Make this a one-time purchase. If a major macOS update requires significant changes to keep the program working, make that a new version that people need to buy. A pretty standard way to keep people from feeling screwed if the break happens right after they bought your software is to give them the next version of your software for free if you release it within 1 year of their purchase.
I think you're actually likely to make more money that way because people will pass on adding yet another subscription to the pile they have already.
- Of coarse its a subscription...
- Given how many developers here use LLMs daily, how do you think about defensibility? Tools like this seem relatively easy to reverse-engineer and replicate with enough time and LLM assistance. Does that influence your decision to charge a subscription rather than a one-time purchase?
- Cant see how this app would fit into a subscription.
- Personally, I like the macOS dock so this wouldn't be for me. $10/year for a dock replacement is a bit much to ask for too, especially since this is a price per seat model. Maybe $15-20 as a one-time purchase per license? One of my favourite apps in the past few years is antinote and that is a one time fee of $5.
- I'm not the target market for a subscription for this, but I found it quite buggy - I had multiple browser windows open and couldn't navigate to more than one. I couldn't navigate to other spaces either (clicking on them did nothing) and scrolling through the apps menu was laggy.
The screenshots on the website look nice though.
- I'll be trying this! I used uBar for a long time, and more recently taskbar as uBar was too buggy to ignore. My main issue with Taskbar currently is that it sits over non windowed fullscreen apps (eg Steam games). Other than that I prefer the design on yours based on a quick look through the page.
- I‘d be happy to pay for an upgrade if future macOS changes break the functionality of this - cool - app, which would require the creator to update it. More work, which I would pay for. But not a subscription, sorry!
Plus, I‘d prefer to (but that’s impossible?) install via the App Store, to avoid a black box.
- Subscriptions for apps that require absolutely no infrastructure to run make absolutely no sense to me. Hard pass.
- Just adding to the pile to say that the subscription kills it for me.
- Take a look to Jotego's (mister FPGA) business model. I was the main maintainer of a distro so I can say that That's not going to work. Also I'm in love with your style.
- Remember when we bought software, and owned the right to use it in perpetuity? Good times those were. Now fucking taskbars are SaaS. There is no end to rent-seeking behaviour. In a decade or two, I suppose we will not only be renting the right to use our computers, but also the mouse and keyboard will be time-gated rentals as well. Mousewheel and numpad only available on the Pro subscription, of course.
- They're milking the final drops, before LLMs become so good that they'll write something like this in an hour
- Subscription ? Big No
- it looks great, looks clean, seems like people want it.
nobody's paying a subscription for a taskbar. The business model here is a one time sale.
- Gnome 2 anyone?
- Is there some more expensive tiers to change the color or do I need to pay a premium?
- Show me a side-dockable vertical taskbar, circa Win XP thru 7 style - and a lifetime license for 10 years' worth of the subscription, which you may no longer even support by then - and you will have closed a sale.
- Looks nice, I'm forced to use OSX at work, but it's a hard no for another subscription.
- “$9.99/year”. <closes tab>
C’mon, man, there’s not even a backend to support. Want more revenue next year? Release a new version that’s a compelling upgrade.
- Was looking for this exact solution.
- Wow, this looks very clean. I'm not the target audience, but if I was looking for a tool in this category, this would be highly attractive to me. Very subtle design that isn't distracting or busy. Well done!
Edit: Ok, feedback. Please know that I'm a junky for independent Mac apps that I find interesting. This is interesting to me.
This feedback is entirely meant to be constructive. I like the app so far and I want it to succeed. Also, as someone who is deeply familiar with the platform and the third-party software ecosystem, my hope is that I can help communicate the things that would make if feel intuitively correct to a majority of Mac users. What I mean is that I'm a nerd who thinks a lot about the platform and the choices devs make that are nuanced and subtle. I hope you find it useful.
1. Practically invisible on a background that's dark / black. The photo on my desktop background is black at the bottom and this thing is therefore invisible. I don't know the best way to address that. Maybe it should sample the colors behind it and default to a light mode at first launch?
2. Frosted glass only changed one tab / chip (the active focus one) and the rest remained black and invisible. Not sure if that's deliberate or not. I expected the whole thing to change. I do see that window thumbnails are now frosted (didn't try thumbnails before toggling).
3. Needs kbd nav. I hovered to get thumbnails and tried arrow keys. No effect.
4. Thumbnail selections would benefit from a border or other visual indicator. Having only traffic light window controls to show which is active isn't sufficient.
5. As I continue to poke around, disabling frosted glass to view thumbnails in dark mode didn't change the glass background for thumbnails. Again, I didn't check thumbnails before switching frosted glass on. I don't know if that's supposed to work that way or not. Seems wrong to me, but I don't know the intent.
6. Delay for hover to invoke tooltips or thumbnails is too long. It feels sluggish. However, the snappy responsive drawing of new content when sliding from one app's thumbnails to another is very nice and impressive. It'd be easy for that to suck, so well done.
7. Time opening / drawing the app menu after first click is too long. I have a bajillion (394) apps installed, might be why. Should be as fast as clicking the Apple Menu regardless of how many apps need to be listed. Wait, now I just clicked it again to check if it is faster after the first time. Looks like the app cached whatever info it had to pull the first time cause it's properly snappy. Maybe pre-fetch that info on first launch so it isn't slow on the first click.
8. The thumbnails for minimized browser windows are awesome! Much nicer than using the thumbnails from Dock windows / tiles. I like that so much that I would consider working this into my workflow despite not needing it otherwise. I probably wouldn't do so, but I like it a lot.
9. The desktop / spaces switcher should probably also have thumbnails showing the content of each space.
10. There should be a toggle that closes a window from the thumbnails. I see that right-click has an option to do so, but there should be a left-clickable toggle in one of the corners. I'm gonna go against typical MacOS idioms and recommend experimenting with putting that toggle at the bottom of the thumbnail because they're so tall relative to the taskbar height. It might be wrong when you test it out. It's one of those things that I think either it feels right or it doesn't. My first instinct, however, is that it ought to be in the upper-left corner.
At the end of the day, I like it. I'm not the target audience, as mentioned above. But I know there are a lots of people who are the intended audience and I want them to have nice tools. I hope this makes some people happy. I'd be happy to provide additional feedback on a future build if the above is considered useful. Email in profile. Fingers crossed this doesn't come off as critical of the app. I like honest and direct feedback and I hope I haven't bummed you out cause that's not at all the intent.
- Wow - thank you so much for the feedback. Let me go through this.
1. That might be a good idea. Do you think adjusting the size of the bar from the settings makes it any better?
2. That seems like a bug. There's glass theme for Tahoe - but I think restarting boringBar might help here. I'll check it out.
3. Fair. I did not think of this use case.
4. Thumbnails have a blue hue for active windows as of now. Could you please let me know how this could work better?
5. Right now the Tahoe glass/frosted switch only works on the bar. A glass revamp is in the works for people who like the Liquid Glass design language.
6. I faced the opposite issue to this during my testing - the thumbnails opened up fairly quickly in my case. I'll take note of it and will fix it in later versions.
7. Correct - first time is slower because of the excessively large number of apps. I'll try to reproduce this.
9. Good idea. Will implement this as well.
10. If you hover on the thumbnail window the close and minimize buttons will show up. Are you talking about the ability to quit the app and all of its windows entirely?
- 1. It wouldn't in this specific case. The photo is of a sunset and the ground in the foreground is completely black for about 20% of the bottom due to contrast with the sun.
2. Still holds after multiple relaunches. Strange.
3. Cool. Looking forward to it!
4. I guess my system is causing multiple GUI bugs to present. I don't see a blue highlight when I mouse-over thumbnails.
10. Oh, I'm a dope. I even referenced the traffic light controls earlier in the comment. It somehow sailed over my head that the thing I was asking for was right there. Just tried it and it worked. However, I closed the only open window for an app and that thumbnail remained after the window was gone and the app had exited. That doesn't seem correct to me. But yes it's implemented and I got stupid for a moment while poking around.
One other thing that I noticed after exiting the app was that all the windows that had been minimized to the Dock were no longer minimized. That's a tiny papercut. Minimizing windows is a form of window management and everything got reset. Not the end of the world, but unexpected and mildly disrupting.
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133 points by a-ve 2 hours ago | 74 comments