Excellent Menu Bar App XMenu Updated
5:14 am, July 8th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
XMenu from the Devonthink people is one of those freeware apps that I recommend to every Mac user I meet. The latest update, version 1.9, is newly released and boasts visual refinements and a helpful new feature.
For the uninitiated, XMenu is a Menu Bar widget for getting to stuff quickly without leaving the app you’re in. What I like most about it is its flexibility. You can have six different shortcuts in your Menu Bar if you like, or just one if you prefer to keep things simple.
That’s what I do. I use the user-defined widget and throw aliases for useful files and folders into ~/Library/Application Support/XMenu – that way, I keep my Menu Bar uncluttered but XMenu still gives me quick click access to stuff like my todo.txt, my income and expenses records, and a handful of use-them-every-day folders.
If your Dock is overcrowded with folders or stacks that you don’t use because, well, because it’s overcrowded, then you should have a look at XMenu. This latest update adds a text snippets manager that works just the same as the user-defined widgets. Put some plain or rich text files in the right place, and XMenu will let you insert them into any app with two clicks.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in News, Reviews, Software | Comment on this article
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WARNING: Don’t double click the XMenu icon from the volume. I made a terrible mistake and did that. Now I can’t get the volume off my desktop (won’t eject because it’s running) and have found no way of controlling the program.
Mark, on July 8th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Got control of it through Command-clicking the icon. The people at DEVON were great in helping me and very fast. Taught me some new ways of quiting an app. XMenu looks like a great little app. and should be very helpful for quickly getting to my programs, now that I properly installed it.
Mark, on July 8th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I’m a big fan of XMenu also; I use the user-defined folder to maintain a list of over a dozen folders containing symlinks (preferred to aliases as they’re much smaller; I use the Symbolic Linker CMI to make them) to my second-tier apps as well as various kinds of documents. I had all this in the Apple menu in the classic Mac OS; when I switched to OS X 10.2 I got FruitMenu to do the same, but it was always a little slow building/showing its menu, and when it wasn’t updated for 10.5 I tried XMenu instead, and like it fine.
HandyMac, on July 8th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Mark: indeed, don’t double click *any* app in its installer volume. Always drag it to your Applications folder first, and launch it from there.
Giles Turnbull, on July 9th, 2009 at 2:46 am
@Mark: Why is that?
sabreman, on July 12th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
it’s very good
hichem, on July 25th, 2009 at 11:27 am