Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications iStat Menus 2.0 released

I do not add a lot of third-party hardware monitoring utilities to my MacBook Pro, but iStat Menus is one of my favorites:

http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatmenus/

version history

From the installer:

To read temperatures and fan speeds you will need to instal the Intel Sensors Module. Would you like to download and install it now ?

The module is released under the GPL license. You can download it from http://islayer.com/help/istatmenus-intel/

I second your opinion about iStat Menus, a great utility and still donationware! There are some minor interface differences between the new version 2.0 ([Snow] Leopard only) and the previous version 1.3:

- The latter's 'Drives' menu item has split into 'Disk Usage' and 'Activity' items, while
- the old 'Temps' and 'Fans & Power' items have been combined into a single 'Sensors' item.
- There is no longer a separate 'Bluetooth' item.

The various pulldown menus still provide the same information, but I regret the loss of a separate Fan readout in the menu bar under the new 'Sensors' item.

alternaut,

For those unfamiliar with this interface:

I was without the fan rotation speed in my menu bar until I did this:

1. Open the iStat Menus system preferences pane.

2. Click the Sensors button in the list of buttons at the left.

3. Note that the sensors are shown in two groups, Active Items and Available Items.

4. In the Available Items, scroll down (the scrollbar does not indicate that scrolling is possible) until you go past the internal hard drive, and then locate the fan sensors area.

5. Drag Left Fan and Right Fan from Available Sensors to Active Sensors.

You may need to log out and log in for the change to take place.

I checked my records, and found no mention of a previous donation, so I made one.

Thank you, once again you're right and fan speed has returned to my menu bar, no logout needed! Given the new and more powerful display options (activated by dragging items from the 'Available Items' to the 'Active Items' in each Menus panel) I *should* have picked up on that! In fact, if applicable, one now can display more than one fan speed, something not possible in previous versions.

alternaut,

You are welcome.

I am now wondering what happens if I launch an application that has more than nine menus, if that is allowed. I have only about half an inch of empty space left on my 15" MacBook Pro screen.

Here is what I have showing in the menu bar:

Network CPU Temp Left Fan Right Fan Battery Voltage Hard Drive Temp

Six iStat Menu items, that's all? Just kidding! There was a thread in the now archived MacFixIt forums on this topic, but I'm not sure exactly where I came across it. Anyway, depending on the menu bar real estate needed by the frontmost app and that available at the current resolution, you're going to lose right-hand side menu bar items from the left to the right.

I'm also not sure if there are items that are not affected by this (they'd be skipped in the display elimination process), but that's the take home message I found in a dusty corner of my memory. I tried to test this on a 20" iMac without much success (too much room and not enough competing app menu items), until I figured that a smaller MacBook screen would be the way to go about this. Duh!

alternaut,

Thank you. I think I can do without the telephone icon and the speaker volume at the right end of the menu bar.

I also have in the menu bar the battery charge on a new iDowell iPack UPS, which is connected to the MacBook Pro via a USB cable. Apple does not allow timed shutdowns for laptops in the event of a power failure, but it is reassuring to know that external drives requiring transformers are not going to spin down if the power fails.

I tell people who are not included to add third-party hardware monitors that without iStat Menus or a similar program, they have no idea what normal temperatures or fan rotation speeds are for their Macintosh and the way they use it. I do not tell them that I just like displays, and have a clock in every room and multiple weather instruments.

That'd be some frontmost app to punt your Volume item! But this reminded me of a potentially relevant utility in my massive dock: NoMenuBar. Invoking this little gem removes the frontmost app's menu until quit, allowing right wing menu bar stuffers like us to enjoy their collection unfettered by leftist app intrusion... (Any relation to political inclination in the locational adjectives used is entirely unintentional. )

alternaut,

Thanks for the link to NoMenuBar. I copied it and pasted it in my Address Book page for iSlayer.

So far, I have not found any application I use that has more than nine menus. Even Aperture and Capture One have only nine.

You're welcome! Obviously, NoMenuBar would be most useful for smaller screen laptop users.

BBEdit has 14 entries in the menu bar. Airport and the Network display from iStat Menus dissappear at the left, but now I should be able to fix that.

fyi you can hold down the command key and drag MOST menu extras down out of the "tray". (MS calls it a "tray" at the bottom, does apple have a name for it besides "top right where the menu extras go"?)

it takes a 3rd party util or terminal comand etc to remove some of them, and some third party extras can be hard to get rid of (stuffit comes to mind) because they refuse to go away when cmd dragged.

Virtual1,

Thank you.

I had not experimented with the Command key and menu bar dragging for a long time.

If I run out of menu bar real estate, I can remove the notice that the internal battery is not charging and the one for the UPS battery. Without removing either, I can now move these items (which appear to be inseparable) to the left.

Windows can expand the tray to two levels, I wonder if there's such a hack for the mac menu bar?

On a related note I actually asked a gsx tech what the official "name" was for the right side of the menu bar where the 'menu extras' live. The answer? "the right side of the menu bar".

I wonder if you'd find Platz! [<-] useful?

When you combine Platz with a launcher, hitting a hot key temporarily clears away your left-side menu bar items so your menulets have full access to the real estate.

Thanks.

I have never seen a Versiontracker entry with only two comments, both about the name of the program.