Smart Menu Bar Management: Adapting Icons Based on Your Screen Setup with Bartender

Today, I listened to the latest episode of Apptories: “Return of the Utility Grab Bag”. @viticci was wondering how to show or hide icons in the menu bar depending on which screen was being used. Here’s how I do it with Bartender to hide icons when I’m only using the MacBook Pro screen, and to show them all when I’m on my large screen, at home or at work.

Disclaimer

Not being very comfortable with hardware-related bash scripts, I admit that these were generated with the help of artificial intelligence. But it does the job for me. There may still be some errors and adaptations may be necessary.

The triggers

I have two triggers: one that detects if only the MacBook Pro screen is active and another that detects if an additional screen is connected to the computer.

Detection script if only the MacBook Pro screen is being used.

#!/bin/zsh

# Script to detect if ONLY the built-in MacBook Pro screen is being used
# Returns "true" if only the built-in screen is active, "false" if an external monitor is connected

# Get complete information about the screens
DISPLAY_INFO=$(system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType 2>/dev/null)

# Count the total number of active screens
ACTIVE_DISPLAYS=$(echo "$DISPLAY_INFO" | grep -c "Resolution:")

# Count internal screens
INTERNAL_DISPLAYS=$(echo "$DISPLAY_INFO" | grep -c "Connection Type: Internal")

# Check if ONLY the built-in screen is being used
if [[ $ACTIVE_DISPLAYS -eq 1 ]] && [[ $INTERNAL_DISPLAYS -eq 1 ]]; then
    echo "true"
    exit 0
else
    echo "false"
    exit 1
fi

Detection script if an additional screen is connected.

#!/bin/zsh

# Script to detect if an external screen is being used
# Returns "true" if at least one external screen is being used, "false" otherwise

# Get complete information about the screens
DISPLAY_INFO=$(system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType 2>/dev/null)

# Count the total number of active screens
ACTIVE_DISPLAYS=$(echo "$DISPLAY_INFO" | grep -c "Resolution:")

# Count internal screens
INTERNAL_DISPLAYS=$(echo "$DISPLAY_INFO" | grep -c "Connection Type: Internal")

# Calculate the number of external screens (total - internal)
EXTERNAL_DISPLAYS=$((ACTIVE_DISPLAYS - INTERNAL_DISPLAYS))

# For debugging (comment these lines for normal use)
# echo "ACTIVE_DISPLAYS: $ACTIVE_DISPLAYS"
# echo "INTERNAL_DISPLAYS: $INTERNAL_DISPLAYS"
# echo "EXTERNAL_DISPLAYS: $EXTERNAL_DISPLAYS"

# Check if at least one external screen is being used
if [[ $EXTERNAL_DISPLAYS -gt 0 ]]; then
    echo "true"
    exit 0
else
    echo "false"
    exit 1
fi

The presets

The two scripts mentioned above activate two presets depending on whether screens are connected or not. There is a preset that I called “Small screen” which hides all icons and another preset that I called “Big screen” which displays everything by default.