Finbar reimagines the Mac’s built–in menu bar search with great features such as fuzzy filtering and tracking of recently selected menu items — without sacrificing an ounce of speed. With Finbar, you’ll unlock the menu bar’s true potential as a native, ubiquitous command palette.

Yes, your Mac has built–in menu bar search capabilities, and in fact, I was a devout user of this feature myself for a long time. While quite serviceable right out of the box, I started to feel there’s a lot to be desired with the way it currently works. A non–exhaustive list:

• No fuzzy searching.
• It searches for topics in the app’s “help books” in addition to menu items, and this can hinder performance significantly.
• It doesn’t remember your recently selected menu items.
• It offers no control over excluding or including specific menu items from search results. For example, the “Apple” menu item is never searched, and there’s no way to change that.

These omissions became even more evident as command palettes gained popularity as a graphical user interface pattern, and many apps started to include their own. All of this persuaded me to start building Finbar. My incentive at first was to scratch my own itch, but I soon realized there’re others who might find the app useful. Once I decided to release it for public use, I went all–in with the goal of crafting the best, most beautiful macOS app I can.

Highlights

Blazing Fast

Finbar is designed to do one thing, and do it well. Built exclusively with native Apple technologies, it’ll retrieve your desired menu item in no time. And when not in use, it awaits patiently in its own little spot in the menu bar, taking virtually no resources.

Fuzzy Search

Find the menu item you were looking for faster and with minimal typing, all while eschewing tiresome memorization of its title.

Adapts to Your Habits

Finbar remembers every menu item you’ve selected, gradually accumulating a list of your favorite menu items. This list stays relevant across launches, and even when menu items have a dynamic, varying title.

Navigate Menus Like a Pro

Traverse the most complex of menu bar hierarchies with just a few keystrokes: Finbar turns every menu bar into a browsable outline, just like the Finder does for your file system. And selecting menu items containing other items will scope the search just to those nested items.

Create Powerful Rules

Create incredibly intricate rules using the Mac’s tried and true rule editing interface (a world first for menu items!), and never see an irrelevant menu item again.

Extend with Custom Scripts

Finbar will automatically pick up any shell scripts or AppleScript files placed inside a designated folder and integrate them with the rest of the menu bar, essentially a way for you to add “menu items” of your own.

More Features

• Can be launched quickly from anywhere using a global keyboard shortcut.
• Shows menu item shortcuts.
• Shows menu item “mark characters” (usually, a checkmark).
• Tabular interface: columns can be reordered and resized to your liking.