Finbar: Release Notes

New

• Searching in outline mode now selects the best-matching item, rather than the first.

Fixes

• Fixed a critical error that made finbar-cli unusable.

New

• Outline mode searches the menu bar while preserving its hierarchy.
• Row text size can now be made larger.
• Row subtitles can now be hidden.
• Added an option to make the settings window floating.
• Sub-menus can now display their child count.
• Performance improvements.

Changes

• Descending into childless sub menus is no longer possible, doing so will emit a beep.
• The total item count in status bar no longer includes group rows, error and placeholder items.
• The Status Bar no longer shows the current selection index.
• The “Clear Recents” menu item has been removed.
• Settings:
  • The license window is now a settings pane.
  • The permissions window is now viewable from the “General” settings pane.
  • Minor design changes.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug preventing scripts from appearing in the settings pane.
• Fixed a bug where the license window would constantly re-appear after successful activation.
• Minor bug fixes.

New

• Changes in Finbar’s scripts folder are now detected automatically (consequently, the “Reload Scripts” menu item has been removed).
• Added a “Scripts” settings pane showing all scripts that are currently loaded.
• Fixed a bug where the fallback action button wouldn’t be shown.

Fixes

• Fixed a crash in the rule list view.

Fixes

• Fixed a crash caused by clicking the rule editor’s “Help” button.

New

• Rule editor improvements:
  • You can now create multiple rules; each can be named and edited individually.
  • The rule editor now has its own settings pane conveniently showing all rules in a list.

Changes

• macOS Monterey is no longer supported.

Fixes

• Fixed rendering glitches in menu item rows.
• Fixed a bug preventing the settings window from opening with the ⌘, hotkey.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug preventing valid licenses from activating.

Changes

• Removed the “Item” menu and the menu commands inside.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug causing Finbar to crash on macOS Ventura and earlier.
• Fixed a bug where using the left and right arrow keys wouldn’t respectively collapse and expand outline rows.

Fixes

• Fixed a fatal error in Finbar’s command-line tool.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug preventing the preferred screen setting from being saved.

Changes

• You can now view the app’s required permissions (e.g. accessibility) and their status through a dedicated window.
• Redesigned license window.
• Added a “Submit Feedback” menu item.

Fixes

• Search field: undo, redo, copying, cutting and pasting text now work more reliably.
• Focusing the search field using a key equivalent (defaults to ⌘F) now works more reliably.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where rows representing disabled menu items wouldn’t appear dimmed.

Fixes

• Fixed a crash causing Finbar to crash when setting a global shortcut.

New

• Finbar’s user interface has been revised to align more closely with macOS conventions for “command palette”-style apps; it’s now more compact, minimal, and translucent. The multi-column design has been removed and now an item’s path sits right beneath its title, for easier scanning.
• The view signaling of a fruitless search has been redesigned.
• The error view has been redesigned as well. Hopefully you’ll see it though.
• Previously, descending to a child-less sub menu would result in a blank, empty list. This scenario is now conveyed properly through a new, dedicated view.
• Recently used items now have their icon overlayed with a small clock.
• Added a menu item for clearing recents.

Changes

• The “quick selection” badges are now permanently visible in the trailing part of a given row, thus eliminating the need to hold the command key to reveal them. Those badges are differentiated from an item’s actual key equivalent (if any) with a lightning bolt icon.
• Redesigned the badges showing a menu item’s key equivalent.
• Improved how an item’s “frecency” score is taken into account when searching through all items.
• Smoother item traversal animations.
• Subtler animations for list item updates.
• Deeply nested items: titles are no longer preceded by the container’s title, and the last path component is no longer removed from the subtitle. That is, all items display exactly as they are. Searching behavior remains the same.
• Tracking of recent items has been improved.
• The “quick selection” hot keys are no longer customizable. They’re fixed to ⌘1 through ⌘9.
• Minor bug fixes and performance improvements.

Known Issues

• Some quick selection badges might not update properly as list items are inserted or removed.
• Row badges might initially appear with a minor visual glitch.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug causing Finbar to crash under some circumstances.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where clicking some menu items would trigger false positive error notifications.
• The “Search Field” menu item was titled incorrectly. It’s now “Find”.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug affecting how recent items were sorted.

New

• Traversing the menu bar is now done through the search field, through search “tokens”, a-la Finder’s Spotlight search. They’ll be inserted into the search field as you narrow down your search; to go back to the previous search scope (and ultimately to the search results’ root view), simply delete a token.

Changes

• You can now select disabled menu items. Read more about this change.
• In relation to the previous point: A menu item’s disabled state no longer affects its position in the search results.
• A new caching algorithm means Finbar should now feel much snappier in subsequent activations of a given app.
• Other minor performance improvements.
• Recent items now appear in a more accurate, relevant order.
• With the addition of the inline search tokens, some changes were made to the path bar. It’s now:
  • No longer clickable.
  • Shows the full path of the currently selected item, rather than the path of scoping menu item.
  • Constantly visible, rather than only when in scoped search mode.

Fixes

• Improved the reliability of the system help menu search feature.

Fixes

• Fixed a layout issue with the quick selection hint boxes.

New

• The old loading indicator has been replaced with a new, beautiful “skeleton”-style loading experience.
• Errors are now shown in-line, as list items.
• An option to search the system help menu is now offered as fallback when there’re no results.
• List rendering performance improvements.

Changes

• The “Accessibility Permission” section has been removed from the app’s settings. If accessibility access is denied, the error would simply show as a list item. Select it to initiate an authorization request.

Fixes

• Fixed a rare layout issue in group row items.

New

• Added support for macOS Sonoma.
• You can now disable Finbar’s global shortcut in specific applications.
• There’re now additional ways to manipulate list selection, while keeping the search field in focus:
  • ⌥↑: go to the first item.
  • ⌥↓: go to the last item.
  • Home: scroll to the beginning of the list.
  • End: scroll to the end of the list.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the app would freeze when entering scoped search mode in certain cases.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where some items were erroneously identified as disabled.
• Fixed a bug where some recent items wouldn’t appear with their contextual title.

New

• Quickly select the first 9 list items using keyboard shortcuts (⌘1 through ⌘9 by default).
• Hold the ⌘ key to reveal positional indicators for the first 9 items.
• Performance improvements.

Changes

• The default keyboard shortcuts for expanding and collapsing menu items have been changed to → and ←, respectively. Tip: hold the ⌥ key along with the main key to collapse and expand recursively.
• Changed the titles of some menu items in Finbar’s options menu.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where finbar-cli would not honor the passed --predicate argument.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where finbar-cli would ignore the --v2 flag passed to it.

New

• The main window can now be freely resized (down to a minimum size).
• Filtering through the items list is now faster.
• Refined the way menu items are searched and displayed. Read more about this change here.
• The help button under the rule editor now links directly to the relevant section in the user guide.
• Options menu:
  • Changed item order slightly.
  • Added a “Find” menu item.
• Changed default column widths.
• Removed the alternating row colors in favor of line separators, for a cleaner look.
• Removed the fade-in animation on activation.

Fixes

• Fixed a highlighting issue in the key equivalent badges.
• Fixed a bug where the path column would unnecessarily truncate and wouldn’t expand even when there’s enough space.
• The settings window’s default position now defaults to the center of the screen.

New

• Added an “Activate” menu item that triggers the designated action for the selected list item.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where double clicking or pressing return on list items would not work in some circumstances.

Fixes

• The rule editor’s window now supports resizing.

Fixes

• Fixed a small interface issue in the release notes preview.
• Fixed a bug where the rule editor’s window size is initially shown with a tiny frame.

New

• The rule editor has been completely revised and is now far more powerful and flexible.
• Parts of the window now includes transparency for a more lightweight appearance.
• Updated the way errors, fruitless searches and loading states are presented.
• Finbar’s settings interface has been streamlined and consolidated into a single pane.
• The lower path bar now appears only when in the search is scoped to a specific menu item. Its design was slightly updated too.
• The menu bar owning application’s icon is now shown more prominently.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where Finbar would not appear in full-screen apps.
• Fixed a bug where pressing return while the search field is focused would choose the last selected outline row, even if no rows are currently shown.
• Fixed a bug where double-clicking an outline column would choose the currently selected row.
• Fixed a bug where double-clicking a group row would choose the currently selected row.

New

• Revised interface: results are now displayed tabularly and in a much more compact, customizable fashion.
• Finbar now includes a beautiful “overview” mode, where you’ll be able to see all menu items, scripts and recents Finbar could find for the menu bar owning app. To return to this screen after searching, simply erase the search query.
• While in overview mode, menu items are now browsable. Expand or collapse menu bar items or submenus and click menu items, all while having a bird’s view of the menu bar‘s hierarchy. And you don’t even have to shift the keyboard’s focus to the list to do so: Finbar comes with customizable keyboard shortcuts just for this purpose. They’re listed in the options menu in the lower right.

Changes

• Added a better explanation of the rule editor’s exclusion behavior.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the main window wouldn’t remain centered when working across multiple displays.

New

• finbar-cli: you can now exclude menu items by specifying the --excluding-title option, followed by the menu item’s title. You should provide this option once for each menu item you want to exclude. See finbar-cli list -h for help.

Changes

• Significant performance improvements to the fuzzy matching engine.

Fixes

• Fixed a small bug related to text selection in the search field.

New

• Settings:
  • You can now choose to show Finbar on a specific screen.
  • You can now configure software update behavior.
• Improved help for the finbar-cli command.

New

• A utility offering command-line access to Finbar, finbar-cli, is now included with the app.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where search field wouldn’t regain focus upon app activation.

New

• Added a “Center Window” menu item.
• In multi-monitor setups, the app now appears on the screen with keyboard focus.
• Settings: you can now hide Finbar’s menu bar extra.

Fixes

• Menu item selection should now work reliably across JetBrains software products.

New

• Added Ventura-compatible launch at login setting.
• Finbar’s main window now closes on ⌘W and ⌘H.
• An icon now appears in Finbar’s status area when updates are available.
• Rows are now slightly more compact.
• Added a “Help” menu item.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where entering the license key wouldn’t work in some cases.