Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
Hi HN! I recently switched from a Fedora/GNOME laptop to a MacBook Air. My old setup served me well as a portable workstation, but I’ve started traveling more while working remotely and needed something with similar performance but better battery life. The main thing I missed was a simple taskbar that shows the windows in the current workspace instead of a Dock that mixes everything together. I built boringBar so I would not have to use the Dock. It shows only the windows in the current Space, lets you switch Spaces by scrolling on the bar, and adds a desktop switcher so you can jump directly to any Space. You can also hide the system Dock, pin apps, preview windows with thumbnails, and launch apps from a searchable menu (I keep Spotlight disabled because for some reason it uses a lot of system resources on my machine). I’ve been dogfooding it for a few months now, and it finally felt polished enough to share. It’s for people who like macOS but want window management to feel a bit more like GNOME, Windows, or a traditional taskbar. It’s also for people like me who wanted an easier transition to macOS, especially now that Windows feels increasingly user-hostile. I’d love feedback on the UX, bugs, and whether this solves the same Dock/Spaces pain for anyone else. P.S. It might also appeal to people who feel nostalgic for the GNOME 2 desktop of yore. I started my Linux journey with it, and boringBar brings back some of that feeling for me.
Discussion Highlights (20 comments)
johng
Wow this looks really neat. I am going to have to give it a try.
mynameisvlad
I use uBar for this: https://ubarapp.com but this looks like a nice lightweight alternative!
temp0826
Looks great. Subscription? Big ol nope.
Contexting
Was looking for this exact solution.
selfawareMammal
Cant see how this app would fit into a subscription.
bradley_taunt
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)
alsetmusic
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.
sonofhans
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.
oa335
I would pay $10 one time for this; a subscription seems excessive to me.
nxpnsv
I am using BoringNotch, which is great. Is this somehow related?
APock
Of coarse its a subscription...
SyneRyder
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.
genbugenbu
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.
blueaquilae
Is there some more expensive tiers to change the color or do I need to pay a premium?
ssenssei
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.
aftergibson
Looks nice, I'm forced to use OSX at work, but it's a hard no for another subscription.
reacharavindh
+1 to amplify the voice that hates a subscription to a taskbar. If it was €15 one time I would’ve instantly bought it.
amarant
Ah, good old Apple, where for only $9.99 a month, you can experience what Linux offered for free 15+ years ago.
fii
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.
applfanboysbgon
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.