my discord : elazdi_al

Hello! Thank you very much for your feedback. I am happy to hear that people like the project.

I believe the best way to show thanks is to tell your friends, family, or anyone who might be interested. This not only increases the number of users but also brings more pull requests. More pull requests help the project grow faster and improve its quality.

Funny story. I originally created this project for myself because I kept forgetting which hotkeys I had set for my spaces in yabai, lol.

A year ago, I printed stickers to remember the number of each space. I did not like how the stickers looked because I used a portable printer with poor print quality. So, I decided to turn my idea into an application.

At first, I made a different app called naisu (it is like yabai but with an American twist). It was a panel that appeared when you pressed the option key. The panel showed the current space and the available spaces.

Unfortunately, I never published that project. It had many features, like style customization. At that time, I did not know how to share projects that were made for tech enthusiasts rather than regular users. Now, I do not plan to publish naisu because it is still unstable and has less functionality than barik.

Now, let me tell you about the future of barik. Since the beginning of the month, I have been temporarily unemployed. This gives me plenty of time to work on the project. In a few days, I plan to release version 0.5.0. In this version, I will introduce a new way to show information called Popup. These are small windows that look like iOS widgets. They open when you click on barik widgets (for example, time, battery, or Wi-Fi).

This version will also let you interact with spaces. You will be able to click on them with your mouse to switch spaces. I believe this new feature makes barik more than just a menu bar replacement. It can also replace the Dock and be an interesting desktop interface solution. In the future, you can place barik elements on any side of the screen. For example, you could put the spaces and applications indicator on the left side, similar to the design in Arc Browser.

In addition, there will be a Store for user styles and widgets. With styles, you can completely change the look of barik. User widgets will add more functions, like a mini Spotify player, a password manager, a small notes app, or real-time GitHub statistics. This is similar to Chrome extensions but focuses on the overall computer experience, not just the browser. A similar feature exists in Raycast, but it relies too much on the keyboard. Sometimes it is not very convenient because I lose track of my important extensions or forget about them.

Another key aspect of the project’s future is to lower the entry barrier for those who are not familiar with yabai or AeroSpace. Even now, the project works well without tiling window manager tools. However, it would be great to let users install and set up tiling window managers directly from barik. This way, you won’t need to dig into configuration files or study long documentation. The setup will be simple and intuitive, using just your mouse.