MenuBarFolder — folders & browser bookmarks in your Mac menu bar
One menu bar, two kinds of content — pin folders and browse Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi & Safari bookmarks.
DMG · macOS 13+ · signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple · MIT, open source. The DMG sits at the top of the release page.
Install: open the DMG and drag MenuBarFolder to Applications, then launch it and enable a Smart Menu or pin a folder. Or via Homebrew: brew install --cask ilya000/tap/menubarfolder. Provided “as is”, without warranty — see terms.
MenuBarFolder is a universal menu-bar viewer for two kinds of content: the files on your disk and the bookmarks in your browsers — both turned into native menus, a tap away from anywhere on screen. Same idea, two sources.
We all have that folder — Downloads, Screenshots, the desktop graveyard of “I'll sort this later.” You open it dozens of times a day, and every time it's the same ritual: find a Finder window, click around, sigh. MenuBarFolder turns that into a single click: pin any folder — or several — to your menu bar, and its contents are always a tap away. Your browser bookmarks get the same treatment — full bookmark trees with favicons, right in the menu bar — and ready-made Smart Menus make it useful on day one. Menus, not a productivity suite.
What it does
- Smart Menus, useful on day one — enable ready-made menus in one click: Downloads and Desktop (newest first), Screenshots (your latest grabs, detected automatically), and Recents (newest files across Downloads, Desktop, Documents, and screenshots).
- Browser bookmarks, finally useful again — pin a Chrome / Brave / Edge / Vivaldi profile, or Safari, and browse its bookmark tree from the menu bar, with favicons. (Safari needs Full Disk Access.) Clicking opens it in that browser; Option-click for actions — copy URL, share, or show a QR code to open the link on your phone. Multiple profiles get distinct badges. Bookmarks are read-only — we never write to a browser's bookmark file.
- Pins folders to the menu bar — each becomes its own icon, a folder glyph wearing the folder's first two letters like a name tag (Ap for Applications, Do for Downloads).
- Click a file, it opens — just like a Finder double-click. Subfolders unfold into nested submenus, as deep as you need. Option-click a file for actions — open, reveal, copy path, share, rename, or move to Trash; a subtle hint sits at the bottom of each menu. (Folders are navigation only.)
- Tagged files stand out — a Finder colour label shows as a coloured dot in the menu. If you marked it, it matters.
- Handles huge folders — 40,000 photos? It reads in the background (no beachball), caches the result, shows the first 250 and folds the rest into a single “open in Finder” line.
- Sorts how you like — by name, date added, date modified or size; folders on top or all mixed.
- Starts at login (optional), and remembers everything across reboots — set it once, forget it.
Private by design
- Reads only the folders and bookmark files you choose, locally, to build the menus. It does not read browser history, tabs, cookies, passwords, or sessions.
Quiet by design
- No Dock icon, no window clutter — one quiet process runs the whole show, however many folders you pin.
- Seed folders from the command line too: MenuBarFolder /Applications ~/Pictures ~/Downloads.
FAQ
How do I put a folder in the Mac menu bar?
Install MenuBarFolder and pick any folder to pin. It becomes its own menu-bar icon whose menu lists the folder's contents, with nested submenus for subfolders — click a file to open it, no Finder window needed.
Can it show my Chrome, Brave, Edge or Vivaldi bookmarks?
Yes. Pin a Chrome, Brave, Edge or Vivaldi profile and browse its full bookmark tree from the menu bar, with favicons. Clicking a bookmark opens it in that browser. Bookmarks are read-only — MenuBarFolder never writes to a browser's bookmark file.
Does it work with Safari bookmarks?
Yes, in the direct-download build. Safari's bookmark file lives in a protected folder, so it needs Full Disk Access — granted once in System Settings.
Is MenuBarFolder free?
Yes — free and open source under the MIT license. The DMG is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple.
Does it read my browsing history, tabs or passwords?
No. It reads only the folders and bookmark files you choose, locally, to build the menus — never history, tabs, cookies, passwords or sessions, and it makes no network connections.
Small and a little playful, but it earns its place in the menu bar every day. Source on GitHub.