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max-mapper/menubar

★ 6,778TypeScriptAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5Setup · moderate

TLDR

A TypeScript library that simplifies building small desktop apps living in the macOS menu bar or Windows notification area using Electron, a tray icon, popup window, and lifecycle events with a few lines of setup.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((menubar))
    What it does
      Menu bar apps
      Tray icon setup
      Floating popup
    Configuration
      Window size
      Preload option
      Focus behavior
    Events
      Show and hide
      Focus lost
      Lifecycle hooks
    Platforms
      macOS
      Windows
      Linux
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Code map

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Build a clipboard manager that lives in the menu bar and shows a floating popup window when the icon is clicked.

USE CASE 2

Create a quick-access weather or time widget that loads an HTML page as a menu bar popup.

USE CASE 3

Add system tray functionality to an existing Electron app with minimal configuration changes.

USE CASE 4

Build a macOS menu bar tool that shows notifications and auto-hides when the user clicks anywhere else.

Tech stack

TypeScriptElectronHTMLCSSJavaScriptnpm

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires Electron as a base dependency, your project must already be set up as an Electron app.

License terms are not described in the explanation.

In plain English

menubar is a TypeScript library that simplifies building desktop applications that live in the system menu bar. These are small apps that display a tiny icon in the top menu bar on macOS or in the notification area on Windows, and open a floating window when you click on them. Examples include weather widgets, clipboard managers, or quick-access tools. The library is built on top of Electron, the framework that lets you create desktop apps using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. With menubar, you point it at an HTML file containing your app's interface, add a few lines of JavaScript, and it handles the rest: creating the tray icon, positioning the popup window correctly near the icon when clicked, and hiding the window when the user clicks elsewhere. You can configure the window's width and height, its position, whether it should stay visible when focus moves away, and whether to preload the window in the background so it opens instantly on click. An optional tooltip can describe the icon, and you can supply a retina-ready icon image for sharp display on high-resolution screens. The library also fires events at each stage of the window's lifecycle, such as when it shows, hides, or loses focus, so you can run custom code at any of those moments. menubar works on macOS, Windows, and most Linux desktop environments. It is available as an npm package with a single direct dependency, and weighs about 3.6 kilobytes when minified and compressed.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Using the menubar npm package, write a minimal Electron app that shows a popup window when you click the tray icon, loading a local index.html file as the interface.
Prompt 2
How do I configure the menubar library to preload the popup window in the background so it opens instantly on click, and hide it automatically when the user clicks outside?
Prompt 3
Show me how to handle the show and hide lifecycle events from the menubar library to run custom code each time the popup opens or closes.
Prompt 4
Build a simple macOS menu bar app using menubar and Electron that displays the current time and refreshes every second inside the popup.
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