OP here - based on the feedback, I’ve switched boringBar to a perpetual license for personal use: https://boringbar.app
It’s now $40 for 2 devices and includes 2 years of updates. After that, you can keep using the version you have, or choose to pay for updates again later.
For businesses, I’m keeping the existing annual pricing.
A lot of the comments on pricing were fair, and I appreciate people being direct about it. I still care a lot about long-term maintenance for an app like this, but I think this is a better balance.
Put the $40 in the app store, I'll buy it just to support this move. (Though it should be $20.)
For business, I would also pay $20/seat in Apple Business's app store (no quantity discount needed), so it's part of our MDM software for Windows users unfamiliar with Mac. Note that subscriptions are not available to businesses using that channel, only flat purchases. All you have to do is have a flat purchase in the retail app store, and businesses can buy that in bulk to assign to users.
// Your other business licensing mechanisms, like, fixed number of users, different license per batch of users, etc., are too awkward for a real business with real employee turnover to keep track of, sorry.
Apps like these unfortunately cannot be put on the App Store as they use some Window Server shenanigans to make it work. boringBar is notarized by Apple and will work well with Gatekeeper if that makes it any better.
Regarding business licensing - I know I need to make changes to the fixed number of users limit. The change for it is there but I need some more testing before that gets pushed out.
Apart from that - why do you think the tiered pricing is bad? As you have more users the price per user goes down essentially to ~$1.5 per year at the highest tier.
I’m trying the demo now, since I’ve been looking for something like this and haven’t been happy with any of the options. This is really close, so I want it to be right so I can be done looking.
I have “Displays have separate Spaces” enabled for a few reasons, and I’d like to keep it that way.
I have “Show on all displays” in BoringBar turned off, because if I turn it on, then I lose the per-monitor window on the bar, which I want.
My MBP and First External Display have the opposite windows on their bars. Spotify is open on MBP, but showing on the monitor, and vice versa. The Main display is fine. External Display 2 is my “Main display” and External Display 1 and the MBP display are “Extend display”.
On the extended monitors, BoringBar doesn’t stop windows from going behind it (it auto resizes on the main display) when I maximize them.
I would really like if it had an option like Windows to group windows by application, but not to put them all in one “chip” as you call it. I just want all of my VSCode windows to be next to each other, without another app’s window in between. If I use your “Group windows by app” then I don’t like how hiding and showing from the bar works. In Windows 11, I always show window title and group windows by app.
Lastly, I’d like if all “chips” were the same size, even if some title text is shorter than others.
Great work so far. It feels far less janky than uBar or others I’ve tried. I’m hopeful and will keep an eye on it! Is there any way to reset my trial if you come out with these changes at a later date? For now I’ll be uninstalling it, as the windows on the wrong display is unusable.
alright man i'm gonna buy it you seem p cool. lovely looking software here too
edit: yeah this is good stuff. see some other bug reports here im actually not running into any myself, running 4 workspaces plenty of apps. its so straight forward and simple, the design is fantastic. seems to play nicely with my rectangle app snapping, though it takes a moment for it to resize since less bottom space is available with the bar but as long as i can snap im happy.
edit2: just tried ubar then ended up back on this. #1 reason is because your app will resize my window after i snap with rectangle. i couldn't get ubar to do that, ubar also felt a little more sluggish at times. ubar is more feature filled but something about the simplicity here is kind of exactly what i needed to replace the macos dock, and yours is hitting the mark really well.
i think few buttons (don't even need to be text menu items) for logout/restart/shutdown would be pretty clutch, but outside of that i do be digging this a lot. nice. enjoy my moneys!
Thanks for actually using the app. Appreciate it! I concur with the uBar issue - its jank was the main reason I built this app.
I didn't want to add the logout/restart/shutdown option initially, but I'll experiment with it to see how useful it is.
Thanks for taking feedback into account but $20 per license is still a bit absurd. StartAllBack for Windows does almost everything your product does and costs $5 for a lifetime license.
Doesn't this make Personal licences about 6x the cost of Business licences?
Here's where this can be awful - I have a few pieces of software that are identical to this. After a few years I switch machines out and can't reactivate them and I'm SOL.
OP here - for boringBar you can use the same license for your new machine. It would not be an issue. Keep in mind though boringBar on your previously activated device will stop working after 30 days if it exceeds the device limit on your license.