From right to left (at the moment, anyway) here are the things in my Menu Bar.
Day Date Time
I have it set to show a three letter abbreviation for the day of the week, and
also month. The time is 12h, i.e., AM and PM.
Settings
Standard “control panel” drop down dialog. I don’t think I’ve even modified
what appears here.
Wireless
It’s a laptop that is always connected via WiFi. I like that Option-clicking on
the icon provides detailed connection information.
Bluetooth
Headphones, AirPods, and keyboards are the devices I connect with over
Bluetooth.
Battery
When my battery usage seems to be higher than normal I like that this tool
gives you a list of the significant energy users.
Volume Mostly I like that at a glance I know whether or not my speakers are muted.
Time Machine
Once per hour snapshots of my data. Nice.
Focus Mode
I make good use of focus modes. I have a geographic one for my weekly cello
lesson. If the day or time of the lesson changes, the focus mode still works. I
also have a weekend one that quiets notifications from most apps. I use Apple’s
Sleep tracking, which has its mode, and I have one that I turn on when I
practice cello to prevent interruptions.
Passwords
I’m all in on the MacOS Passwords app. I used 1Password for years, but the
increasing subscription cost and feature creep wore me out.
Take Five
Allows me to keep tabs on what is currently playing. Nice that it recognizes
YouTube videos, movies, and music.
SpameSieve I started using SpamSieve soon after getting my Titanium PowerBook G4 in 2002. Still use it for my domain email.
Tailscale I have Tailsacle on all my personal computers, and I have those IP addresses in my ssh config with aliases so it is simple to remote into any other computer from the one I’m one. Exit mode is great when traveling to route my traffic through my home connection.
Maestral
A Dropbox GUI replacement. I hard use Dropbox any more. When I do, I use
Maestral rather than the device limited official client.
Podman Desktop
An alternative front end to Docker. Typically I only use it for databases when
I’m toying around with some project that needs a data store. Often it isn’t
even running.
RepoBar
The newest member of my Menu bar is RepoBar. It gives lets me monitor my GitHub
repositories quickly and easily.
Even with 15 Menu bar items I still have about an inch of room before things would disappear under the dreaded notch. Should I ever get to that point I’ll look into Bartender or similar to organize the denizens.