Menubar icon changes its location

Hi,
I am using DEVONtkin Pro 3 on macOS 10.15.2. All of this on a MacBook Pro 13 that I connect to and disconnect from an external display every day.

Since I switched to the 3 version, I noticed that the menubar icon of DTP won’t stick to the place I try to set for it.
I want it to stay in the left part of my menubar, because I need it to be visible when I want to drag something in the sorter. So I hold the ⌘ key and I drag the icon where I want to be… and it works fine… until the next launch of DTP (not systematically, though, it seems), when it goes back to the far left end of the menubar (where I cannot access it, most of the time).

I don’t know what I could be doing wrong, here? I’m pretty sure the behaviour of this icon was the same before I switched to Catalina, and this is the only piece of software that does this, on my computer.

Is there anything I could try to fix this ?
Thanks in advance.

No, there is nothing you can do about this. Development would have to assess this.

Ok, that’s good to know! I can stop trying things :wink:

Thank you.

You’re welcome. :slight_smile:

I haven’t been able to reproduce this behaviour. The order of menubar items and the location of the DEVONthink menu item is controlled by macOS. We do not change, reset or define its position in the menubar so I am unsure why it would change after restarting DEVONthink.

Hi, thank you for your help.
I’m using an utility called Barsoom (a bit like Bartender). It could be related. I will try to disable it, and check if the result is any different?

Edit : typo

That would be worth trying, I have tried with Bartender and it worked. ok, Barsoom is not an app I have come across.

Hello, I installed Bartender and, so far so good. It seems Barsoom does a bad job with DEVONthink. I’ll try to ask the developer about it.

Thank you for your help.

I am glad that Bartender works, and it would be good to know what Barsoom say.

Bartender on Catalina is not as reliable as on previous macOS / OS X versions in terms of keeping menubar icons glued in place. It is buggy. If an icon moves to the wrong position, command-click-drag the icon on the menubar to the correct position, when Bartender is active.

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Besides Bartender, how else do DEVONthink users manage to keep the Sorter always accessible? I’ve got so many menu bar apps. Wish I could make the Sorter lock into place and prevent it from appearing at the end of the menu bar (after all the other menu bar icons, sometimes off screen) when I launch DT.

I think it’s out of my hands as a user, but shouldn’t it be possible for the devs to make it remember its position? Lots of my other menu bar apps stay in order even after I quit and reopen them.

Have you considered using the docked tab on the side of your screen instead?

Why “Besides Bartender” ?

Bartender is an amazing solution - especially Bartender 4 with its customization/layout abilities.

I think it’s ugly. Sorry :man_shrugging:. Just not consistent with the rest of macOS’s appearance and it distracts me and gets in the way.

Is there a reason that you’ve made the design decision for the sorter menu bar icon to move around? I can’t see why it shouldn’t act in a way more consistent with other apps. And to follow up, if you’re deliberately choosing for it to move around and always appear at the end of the list, maybe there could be another option to avoid this trouble. Like, would it be possible to make it so that right-clicking on the regular DEVONthink app icon in the dock opens the Sorter features? I would much prefer that over its current functionality.


It’s overwhelming to me. I can’t easily figure out how to use it to accomplish exactly what I want. I’d rather deal with the minor inconvenience of the DEVONthink Sorter icon be inconsistently positioned than install an extra app that clutters my OS.

We didn’t “make a decision to move the menubar icon around”… and why would we deliberately do that? :thinking:

Development would have to assess if there’s something that can be done, but it’s certainly not something we added as a feature.

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Good to hear that you’re looking into this! Thanks!

We do not change the position of the icon of the Sorter. What version of macOS are you running and which actions causes the icon to move in Bartender?

Bartender fixes the problem where the Sorter moves around. But I prefer not to use Bartender.

When DEVONthink is open, I can Command-Drag the Sorter icon to rearrange it. But if I quit DEVONthink and then reopen the application, the Sorter always reappears as the list item in the menu bar – further to the left than all the other menu bar applications.

None of my other menu bar apps, like Trickster, Hook, PopClip, BetterTouchTool, and MeetingBar, have this same issue. Their menu bar icons remain in the same order even after quitting and reopening the applications.

??

Have you tried Bartender 4?

It precisely addresses your issue - easily, unobtrusively

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I haven’t been able to reproduce the issue on my system, which version of macOS are you running?

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