How to Install, use, and edit plugins

Create a folder

When you first start BitBar, it displays a dialog box so you can decide where its plugins will be stored. Create a new folder in your chosen location (perhaps one called BitBar in your Documents folder) and click “Use as Plugins Directory.”

Activate BitBar

You should now see BitBar in the menu bar. Right now, it doesn’t do very much — you can click to open its menu and change the plugins folder, set the app to open at login, or quit it entirely. We need to install some plugins!

Check out plugins

In BitBar’s menu, click Get Plugins. You’ll be sent back to the website from which you downloaded the app. Let’s start with a plugin for quickly rating iTunes tracks. In the Music section (on the left), find “iTunes Rating.”

Install the plugin

Click Add to BitBar under the plugin and a confirmation dialog will appear. Click Install. In the menu bar, the “BitBar” text is replaced by the plugin’s icon. If iTunes isn’t open, this is a musical note — click it and “Launch iTunes.”

Use the plugin

Prior to iTunes playing, the widget might register an error, but as soon as you play a track, the widget should show the corresponding star rating. You can update this by clicking the stars in the menu bar and choosing a new rating.

Install a timer

From the Time section of BitBar’s website, install the Pomodoro Timer plugin. When activated by choosing Work from its menu, it starts a 25-minute countdown that alternates with threeminute breaks, to keep you focused.

Power up Clipboard

From the System section, install Clipboard History. This places a clipboard icon in the menu bar. Click it and you can access the last 10 pieces of text or links you copied. To send an item back to the Clipboard, just choose it from the menu.

”Now playing”

From Music, install Adam Kenyon’s “Now playing” plugin. When music’s playing, this displays the track name, making it a handy companion to the rating plugin. Open its menu to access playback controls and artist info.

Edit a plugin

Open BitBar’s plugins folder (pick Preferences > Open Plugin Folder from any BitBar plugin’s menu) and then open the “nowplaying.sh” script in a text editor. In the output section, find the part that starts echo "$track | length=40".

Make some changes

In that line, after the opening quote symbol, add $artist: with a space after it, and save the file. You’ll now see the artist and track name in the menu bar, to a maximum of 40 characters as stipulated by the last digits in the script.

Currency tracker

In Finance, install Currency Tracker. This cycles through how many US and Canadian dollars you get for a Euro. In BitBar’s plugins folder, open “currency-tracker.py” in your text editor and find the currFrom and currTo values.

Edit settings

To set a new base comparison currency, change currFrom’s EUR to something else (say, USD). Then add whatever you like to the currTo list. Save, then pick Preferences > Refresh all from BitBar’s menu to apply the changes.