Broomstick for Mac

Broomstick for Mac offers a solution for users who find their menu bars crowded with the icons of apps they have installed. By allowing users to hide icons -- at least some of them -- Broomstick promises a tidier menu bar. However, Broomstick is kind of a pain to use, and we're not sure it's really worth the hassle.

Getting started with Broomstick for Mac is easy enough; opening the application reveals a straightforward menu with options to hide an app, show an app, customize the order of the menu bar icons, check for updates, or submit an app request. Broomstick can't hide every icon, but users can request support for additional ones. Of the apps we had installed, Dropbox and the native Spotlight app were the only ones that Broomstick recognized. We tried hiding Dropbox with Broomstick, only to find that it disappeared for a few seconds and then came back. We had better luck getting Spotlight to leave and stay gone, and we were happy to find that it came back quickly when we wanted it to. Curiously, when we tried to use Broomstick to reorder our icons, Dropbox did disappear, and it took a few rounds of fiddling and restarting Broomstick to get it to come back. Overall, we think that Broomstick is a great idea, but its execution could stand some improvement. If your menu bar is cluttered and you have a number of apps that Broomstick supports, it might be worth a try, but we're not terribly enthusiastic about it.

Broomstick for Mac installs and uninstalls without issues.

• You can now hide Alfred, Apple's menubar icons, BetterTouchTool CloudApp, CPU Speed Accelerator, Evernote, Growl, Google Drive, Insync, Last.fm, Splashtop Streamer and LogMeIn Hamachi!
• This update also fixes a couple of typos, improves accuracy with the ordering of the menubar, and for crowdsourcing.