 If you live stream on your Mac or even record videos using software like e-cam live or OBS Or even if you just have meetings for that matter, you might want to stick around to hear about these five little menu bar apps Hello, and welcome to take one tech. My name is Alec and today We're going to talk about five little menu bar apps that I use all of the time specifically when I'm either streaming or Recording videos like this and I also have used them quite heavily over the past year or so as we've been all Having a lot more zoom meetings than we did before So yeah, these are basically if you're not familiar with what I'm talking about These are the little apps that sit up in the top of your menu bar on your Mac There's lots of useful little applications that you can get that are really helpful for just sort of productivity in general And I've probably got around about 30 that set tend to sit in there And that sort of brings me on to my first recommendation really which is a Little app called bartender and what bartender does is it helps you to basically Organize all of the little menu bar apps that you've got in there So if I flick back to my screen again, I'll show you what I mean You can see how many apps I've got up at the the top here showing in the menu bar And if I just click into bartender, I've actually got a lot more than that But they are in fact Sort of hidden out of the way so that they're not cluttering up the menu bar, especially if you've got a Particular app open that has lots of menu items at the top on the other side Then sometimes your menu bar items can sort of disappear off the edge, especially if you're on a smaller monitor So having them in this little secondary bar here with bartender is a really sort of useful feature Now bartender itself if I click on it and show you how it works in the preferences There is also another little thing to it which has been a an added little bonus Which was with with the last release of the Mac OS the Mac OS big sir For some reason then when they refreshed the look of the the user interface They seem to add an extra spacing between all of the menu bar items So this turned what was already a sort of lack of space in the menu bar It just really compounded the issue because now they were all spaced further apart. So one of the options that you do have in Bartender is to actually revert back to the either the default Spacing or you can actually flip to the small spacing or no spacing So you can actually change how far apart those menu bar items are space So that in itself is quite a useful feature from from my point of view certainly And then we've got some other Little features that you can have from it in here. You can change the icon for it for example You can also change the the behavior of it So at the moment I have mindset so that when I click on the little icon in the top Then there's this sort of secondary bar But you could actually also have it so that the they are still within the main menu bar But they just collapse out to the other side instead Now in terms of the layout You have some flexibility here in so in terms of which bits go where basically So which little apps you want where and you simply just drag them So this bit at the top is the sort of main menu bar and then this bit down here is the The bartender bar So here you can see if I drag something in From here And then drag it back into this part. It will change what is in the menu bar You can also change where any new items if you install any new apps you can either have them to Automatically go into the main bar or you could have them automatically go into the separate Bartender bar So I prefer to have it just going in here because if I've installed something new initially I probably want to have a look at it and check some other settings and things like that So as a default I have them all go into the first Menu bar and then I can move them into the bartender bar As and when I need to you can also have some there's some Particular apps that you might want running, but you're just never really interested to see them And so you can put that into this hidden section down here as well So there is a hotkey as well. You can sort of program to show the different items Uh, and so you can have it so that they'll just appear when you press those hotkeys I'm not actually using those myself, but there you go So that is the first one which is bartender and before you rush out and go and start looking For all of these apps I've got a little thing that you may be interested in at the end of the video Where I'll show you how you can get actually all of these apps and over 200 more as part of a Very very cost effective bundle. So I'll be talking about that at the end of the video Now the next app that I want to talk about is a Another menu bar app. They're all menu bar apps today And that is one called iStat menus and that's actually this thing that I've got along the top if I flick back to my screen You can see I've got all of these different menu items at the top And what that is giving me is it's giving me some system information So I'm monitoring my processes my cpu My disk space the amount of ram being used And the network traffic and so on And this is useful when you're streaming because it's useful to be able to see what's using up what resources Also good to be able to see, you know, if you're close to your limit, which I certainly am on a number of occasions because I'm running a late Sorry early late 2013 macbook pro So I'm probably pushing it to the limit a bit with what I'm trying to do with it with the video production and so on So it's good to see where your resources are being taken up And I've obviously as I'm just about to as I am recording I've shut down a lot of tasks so you can see that the primary task that's taking up the The resources here is my ecam live, which is the software that I'm using to make this video in And interestingly if you're or you may be interested rather in The software that I'm using to make this whole video is ecam live And that allows me to make these videos all on the fly live And record them straight to disc and with all of the sort of scene transitions and things like that And if you're interested in making these sorts of videos yourself And maybe you've tried obs and want something a little bit more user friendly Then certainly it'll be worth giving ecam live ago And if you use the link that I'll drop down in the description But also you can just go to my website take one tech dot i o slash ecam And that'll take you through to the sign up page where you can sign up for a free trial of ecam live And it certainly made my life a lot easier in making all this content But in any case, let's get back to the Video here and I'm talking about iStat menus So it's really good. It's obviously fully customizable as well So I can come down to this little button here to go into the customization And here again, we've got this Space at the top which represents what's going to show up in the menu bar And you can see you've got all of these different sort of classifications of Basically system data that you have access to I'm only accessing a fraction of it really but you can have all sorts of things like the Fan speeds the temperatures. So there's all these sensors that you may not realize are actually built into the the mac So you can monitor, you know temperatures and things like that So in the menu bar, I don't have those all displaying Although I do have a couple just to look at my my temperatures in the top there And then if we come down, we can see all of the all of the different temperatures of all of those sensors It's good just to get an idea of you know, if your machine is overheating or not mine looks like it's pretty much getting to there And then we've also got the RAM usage So once again, if you find that your system is getting slowed down or you're having issues with particular applications It is just good to be able to see exactly what is using up those system resources So yeah, I start menus. I've been using this for Think about 15 years or so now basically since I got a mac and it's been it's been really useful And yeah, just good to manage those resources and make sure you're not sort of maxing out on On anything So next we come on to number three and it's kind of timely really because since we're talking about system resources If you are Live streaming then you're going to want to make sure that you have got all the bandwidth available to you that you need And that there aren't any other little applications and things like that that are actually hogging your resources So it's a good idea to shut down any applications that you're not using In fact, I'm going to be doing a live stream tomorrow all about my whole process of how I do my video production From start to finish and in that I'll be including a checklist A sort of going live checklist if you like of all the things that you need to check before you actually click that button And it's really as applicable For recording as it is for live streaming because you don't really want your system resources to be taken up And anything to interrupt your flow And it's also just as important with meetings really so that you don't have any Little interruptions pop pop up. So all that to say I haven't actually said the name of the app yet But number three then is whoopsie daisy. There we go. I'm too trigger happy on my buttons today Number three is something called one switch and this is a really useful app If I come back to my desktop, let me just get iStat menus out of the way One switch is this little thing that sits up here And it is a series of toggles that allow you to switch on and off various things that you have in the max system So there are some things that you can do from other places such as dark mode, for example Although why you'd need a switch for that it should just always be on But then you've got keeping the computer awake So if you've got a task that you want to have and make sure the computer doesn't go to sleep for then You can make sure your computer stays awake for that You can mute the microphone from in here activate the screensaver Again, these are all things that there are other ways to do it So I tend to have my screensaver set with hot corners So that's a feature that you can do in the Mac where you just drag your mouse over to a particular corner And it activates an action So I have that for my screensaver and putting my display to sleep But then there are various other things But the reason why I specifically use this one and why it is applicable for live streaming or for recording or for meetings is first of all There's a little toggle here to hide desktop items now. I don't tend to have that much of a messy desktop I tend to have a habit of having things on my desktop whilst I'm working on them during the day And then I sort of actually have an automation to clear them all up at the end of the night and and file them But still when I'm on a call or something like that I don't really want to have all of my desktop icons visible And if I'm doing a screen share obviously Oops, excuse me And I would also not like to have that as well if I'm doing a demonstration such as this So we don't want the desktop cluttered up now as it happens my icons are on my second monitor But having this little toggle here to be able to show and hide the the desktop icons Is a really good way to just clear up all of the clutter when you're about to do a screen demonstration Similarly, I have do not disturb As I mentioned before just so that we don't get any unwanted interruptions But the other one that I use it for is this screen resolution and basically that allows you to select multiple Screen resolutions and toggle between the two or rather two and and toggle between those two resolutions And the reason why I find that useful. In fact, if I just bring up system preferences one second I should have prepared this really But you can do this anyway obviously in system preferences on a Mac. So you come down to the displays here And then here you'll see the Got my two monitors. So this is my MacBook monitor. So here you can see normally I'm the sort of person that likes to have as much space as many pixels as possible So normally I would have mine on this setting the more space. So everything's really tiny That's how I like to have it. However, when I'm doing these demonstrations Then I don't want it too small on your screen Hopefully, you know, if you're watching on a computer, it should be visible And if you're watching on a mobile then I appreciate maybe a little bit tight to see some of this detail So I want to make it kind of as big as possible, but still be workable So I find that this setting is good to give me enough space on the screen to be able to show you what I'm doing Without it being too far zoomed in. Well, what this switch here does is it just allows me to toggle between those two resolutions I'm not actually going to do it now because I don't know quite what's going to happen if I do that on a live But basically that is going to just switch me back to my my preferred viewing resolution So that's a really good little app to just help me quickly Go and toggle those different things on before I start my recordings So if you are finding this useful so far and you would like to ask me any questions Then do go ahead and leave those in the comments and also while you're down there Go ahead and click that like and subscribe button and turn on notifications Incidentally, these are my five menu bar apps that I use specifically when I'm doing live streaming or recording But as I say, I use about 30 different apps in the menu bar alone And so I'll be doing a different sort of series of these videos where I focus on different use cases Some for sort of power users and productivity and things like that And so I'll try and feature all of these other ones that I'm using along the way as well So the next one still on a similar sort of topic really as we've been talking about is Number four and that is a app called an app called trip mode. So let me come back to my screen again And this is this little app up here if I can highlight it, uh, where's it gone? There we go. The one that looks like a little train and basically this one allows me to have different Sort of profiles for different tasks that I'm doing And so if I come down here at the moment I've got streaming and what that's doing is it's blocking any network connections from apps that I don't want To have access. So at the moment my adobe creative cloud Is not having any access to the internet neither is my express vpn iCloud That's a big one that runs in the background that people often don't think about But you definitely want to turn that off because the last thing you want is to be You know trying to do some streaming Or recording something and then you have a big download that kicks in or iCloud starts sinking something or dropbox starts sinking something And that takes up all of your bandwidth and gives itself priority over what you're trying to do So this allows me to basically only allow certain apps. So here I've got ecum live and my stream deck And everything else will be blocked from any network communications And it just means that I'm getting the full bandwidth over the network for my live stream Now also in here you can Whoops if I've just come back into it you can select different profiles. So I have one for when I'm on meetings So I want obviously things like zoom on microsoft teams to have a priority then I also for some of my work do some heavy data analysis. So when I'm doing that I want different applications and then also for one when I'm Tethering on the phone again I want certain applications like safari and things like that to have access to the network But I again wouldn't necessarily want my iCloud to start sinking over 4g if I'm in a foreign country especially So so yeah, it just means you can set up these different profiles and split between them So again part of my sort of going live checklist that I'll be talking about in the live stream Is is to go through and just toggle these things on and off So finally the last one that I want to talk about which is Possibly a little bit of a niche, but it's an app called present if I present if I Bit of a funny accent there on it But present if I sits in the top corner here And this allows me to basically annotate on the screen So if it's got a little hot key control a if I press control a Then it allows me I've got this little pointer You can see this little screen that comes up at the top and it basically allows me to draw on the screen I can put little arrows on there. I've got a little Drawing tool here so I can click on that one and then I can just scribble on things I can put boxes around things and we can just clear it off like that or we can type on it as well So this is good if you're on well if you're doing something like I'm doing and you want to show somebody Where it is in the menu bar for example, and we could just come over here and say yes This app is just here in the menu bar. So it's great for doing demonstrations Or if you're on a call with somebody On a you know teams meeting a zoo meeting something like that and you're talking about an app or showing some data Or whatever you happen to be doing then it's a great little way to just annotate those If you're doing something more complex then, you know, it might be a good idea to have A telestrator linked to your ecam live or your obs And I'll be doing another whole video on that because that isn't really a menu bar app But I have a method for doing that where you can use an ipad or a second Touchscreen to use as a telestrator, but that's something for another video when I've made that video I will be sure to put a link up to it in the top corner So that was the five apps that I I use regularly and I sort of recommend but The question now is how much do they all cost? Well, the thing is they are, you know individually There's a couple of them that are nine dollars five dollars twenty dollars and all different prices However, you can actually get them through something called set app Now set up is basically a an app in itself That you subscribe to and you get all of these apps and in fact over 200 apps that you can use as part of that subscription And that means that As well as these apps there are I forget the exact balance between how many are menu bar apps and full full blown apps But there are a lot of really powerful full blown apps in there as well And it's just nine 99 a month However, if you use the link below Or the link that i've linked to there take one tech.io slash set app Then you can get one month free if you go direct to the website I think you get a seven day trial But if you use that link then you get one month free and I'd advise getting the month because like I say there are 200 apps So you do want to make sure you've given them a fair go to see which ones you want to use I'm probably out of the 200 using around about 20 or 30 of them So it's not a case that they're all going to be suitable for you But if I just come and show you actually what set up looks like because as I say it is an app in itself So you do download it to your uh your system and then basically you have an interface I should share my screen. It might help you see what I'm seeing and here basically once you open the app up So this is the set up app And in here you have uh, they've sort of grouped them by different things lifestyle creativity developer tools All these sorts of things lots of these apps. I've been using actually Before for years. So there's there's lots of great quality apps better touch tool So I haven't actually got that one installed through set up because I already owned it And there's there's just loads. So I'd say probably out of all the all the 200 I've probably got about 50 or 60 of sort of staples in my workflow really So yeah, you just come down here or we can click on all apps I can say they're grouped and you can just look through all of the apps So over 200 of them and as I say if you use that link that I'll put in the description The way that works is you just get a month for free to try all of the apps out if you don't like it There's no commitment And it's also to be honest with you. It's a good way to try some apps out It may well be that you try some of the apps see which ones you like and then you don't actually use the set up subscription But you just have tried the app And so then you could just maybe go and buy the one that you want or the two that you want or whatever But as you can see, there's really quite a long long list of them. And yeah, if I just go to My explorer, I think this has got oh, sorry on this Mac. It will show you These are the ones that I've got I'm personally using so far out of those in fact this one here This sketches one That's a great app to use if you're using a Telestrator, but I'll talk more about that in that that other video But it's a sketching app and so you can use it with your Your iPad on sidecar with your apple pencil Green background telestrate over the top of your e-cam live But I'll explain that in full detail in another video. So yeah, that was set up and as I say If you go to Take one tech.io, which is my website slash set up. Then that just links you through to the set up The set up page where you can download the the free trial The way that works from an affiliate point of view just in case you're interested Is if you try it for a month and then sign up after the month You will have had the free month and then I will get an extra free month added onto my subscription So that's how it works and then you can tell all of your friends about it as well But it's not really about the affiliate link to be honest It is something that I use day in day out and it is yeah, it is really a valuable tool Incidentally, if you are interested in the things that I've been talking about I've also got my website obviously where you can go and you can find links to all of this sort of stuff My blogs on there my podcast and everything like that. So be sure to check that out as well So that's about all but I'll just remind you once again Leave any comments down in the description in the the comments box below and also click that like and subscribe button So you get notified whenever I make my next videos about my other menu bar apps because I've still got about 30 more to get through So that's all for me today. I hope you found that useful. But in the meantime Go and check out some of these other videos coming up right now