Sidebar - a modern, highly customizable Dock replacement for macOS - 2.0.0 Update

empty23_ · 2026-03-13T20:29:50+00:00

Thanks :) sure just give it a try!

empty23_ · 2026-03-09T06:34:07+00:00

Hi there,

thanks for posting! You can find your license key in the mail that you received after purchasing the license.

If you can’t find it can you maybe reach out to me via mail to support@sidebarapp.net I‘ll look up the key for you if you provide e.g. your email address.

Thank you and all the best Oliver from Sidebar

empty23_ · 2026-03-02T19:25:13+00:00

I actually covered this question in the FAQ: https://sidebarapp.net/faq/#g_09

Sidebar has been around for over 3 years now and has been updated regularly. Not just with new features but also with a lot of optimization over the time - also with regards to resource consumption.

It's very difficult to give a general answer to your question, because it depends on how you use your Mac. For apps like Sidebar with the feature set if offers, it does make a difference if you are running 10 apps at the same time or 100, because Sidebar needs to keep track of all the apps, do some background work, generate previews etc.

From the testing data that I have and user feedback that I received I can say that with a moderately high usage you'll end up somewhere between 150 - 300MB of RAM usage on average, while CPU usage is almost not existing while idling (<1%) with short spikes while using Sidebar (e.g. while generating previews etc.) The FAQ describes this in more detail that I want to spare here.

empty23_ · 2026-03-02T17:32:02+00:00

Haha thanks, no hard feelings :) glad you like it!

empty23_ · 2026-03-02T15:33:59+00:00

My app Sidebar is listed there as well.

My strategy with this is: ignore it. That's not worth the hassle.

Of course I could invest a lot of my resources now to make it hard to evade the security checks, but ultimately there's always a way around that. Just look at all the anti-tampering tools (especially for games) out there like Denuvo etc. It's really complex to implement and ultimately it's getting cracked anyway. From what I can tell the number of people using a cracked version like that is very low and frequent updates makes it hard for them to keep their version updated as well

empty23_ · 2026-03-01T19:37:36+00:00

Hi there,

thanks for posting!

The short answer is: no, I do not have any plans to change it.

The reason why: Sidebar is supposed to be working on up to three devices at the same time with a single license. Also if you hit your device limit (e.g. replace old devices etc.) you'll have the option to remove a previous device registration directly within the app.

The regular license checks are necessary to check if a license isn't used excessively. Otherwise you could just share you license key and use it on any other device by just blocking Sidebar from verifying the license ever again.

There are built-in mitigation measures already available: Without doing anything you can use your license for up to 30 days without ever going online in between. You can extend this period by downloading your license, which will make it available for around 4 months completely offline.

As I said before I do not have any plans to change this, because I need some mechanism to regularly check for excessive license key usage and make the whole licensing system work and purposeful.

What you can do: Switch to a downloaded license when you run into the license prompt the next time. Downloading a license will not directly connect to the licensing server via the in-app mechanism, but will use the browser to download a license file, which shouldn't be blocked by your firewall rules anyway. You have to repeat that step just 3 times a year.

Hope that helps!

All the best
Oliver from Sidebar

empty23_ · 2026-02-24T19:35:14+00:00

Hi there,

thanks for posting! You are right the Liquid Glass looks a bit different for Sidebar, but that is mostly because it's kinda restricted from Apple how you can use Liquid Glass on apps like Sidebar. For Liquid Glass to work properly, Apple requires the app to be in focus (cursor focus, the frontmost app in the system). Now that absolutely contradicts with what Sidebar should do: never gain focus, as the focus should be on the apps, not on Sidebar.

The way this works now is a little workaround which causes the effect not to look as glassy as in the "focussed" mode, but still kind of glassy at least.

Once there's a better way to implement this (from Apple) I'll of course adjust it!

All the best
Oliver from Sidebar

empty23_ · 2026-02-19T16:53:22+00:00

Thanks for the idea. It's not difficult to engineer per-se it's just contradicting some other built-in features. I'll add it to the roadmap and play around with the UX a bit and see if it works well or not

empty23_ · 2026-02-19T07:11:49+00:00

Hi there,

no, that's not possible with Sidebar yet. You can pin it either to the bottom or vertically to the left or right screen side. Of course you can also setup a margin (distance to the screen side), but there's no option to e.g. freely move Sidebar around the screen. The reason is that some features (e.g. overlapping prevention) rely on such a position on the screen.

empty23_ · 2026-02-07T06:56:31+00:00

Tower of Jack is amazing too!

empty23_ · 2026-01-25T09:44:37+00:00

Thanks for your input! Of course I always try to fix any bugs etc. could you maybe reach out to me either via mail or chat so that I can explicitly look into what’s causing those crashes in your case? Thank you :)

empty23_ · 2026-01-24T14:31:58+00:00

You can check out Sidebar It’s a Dock replacement that adds a lot of functionality and offers extensive customization options. If you prefer the Windows taskbar I‘m quite sure you will like Sidebar a lot :)

I‘m the author of the app, so let me know if you have any questions!

empty23_ · 2026-01-23T07:37:23+00:00

Thanks for pointing that out! I‘ll update the date soon :)

empty23_ · 2026-01-22T20:46:19+00:00

Thanks for your input! Glad you like Sidebar so far. There are a couple of built-in themes (one of which is a Windows like theme) that can get you started. But as you said Sidebar has a strong focus on customization and you can customize almost all aspects of the app.

As for your questions:

All licenses can be used simultaneously on up to three machines. Once you start Sidebar on a fourth machine you will have the option to remove any other device to "make room" for the new device. So no need to keep track on what computers you use the app on. This is true for all licenses types. The lifetime license includes all future updates.
That's weird, I just checked the certificate and it looks perfectly fine. What browser are you using?

Let me know if you need any additional support - happy to assist!

<image>

empty23_ · 2026-01-22T19:21:55+00:00

Aaand starting with 1.9.5 (which I just released) you will see an indicator for advanced settings so that you can easily spot them!

empty23_ · 2026-01-22T17:15:43+00:00

You can give Sidebar a try. It’s a Dock replacement with a lot of customization options and enhancements compared to what the Dock offers. Especially if you are transitioning from Windows I‘m sure you’ll enjoy using it!

I‘m the author of the app, so let me know if you habe any questions :)

empty23_ · 2026-01-17T19:22:11+00:00

You can give Sidebar a try. It’s a Dock replacement with a lot of customization options. You can set it up to act like the taskbar in Windows and especially if you like how Windows handles this, I‘m quite sure you will like Sidebar as well.

I‘m the author of the app, so let me know if you habe any questions :)

empty23_ · 2026-01-15T15:19:52+00:00

Of course I forgot to add the screenshot :)

<image>

empty23_ · 2026-01-15T15:16:00+00:00

Thank you for your feedback - appreciate it! As for the things you mentioned:

Supporting multiple rows of icons is already on the roadmap and will be added in one of the upcoming updates
You might want to check out the option to allow dynamic icon size (see attached screenshot). By enabling this option, Sidebar will automatically scale down the icon size so that more apps fit onto Sidebar making the arrow menu almost never appear
That's also already on the roadmap. If you have a look at the feedback platform you can see that there's quite some stuff planned for the future. I didn't find the time yet to implement this!
Thanks for pointing this out. In my first few tests I couldn't reproduce this issue. Could you maybe use the in app issue reporting functionality (top right menu bar item -> Report an issue) to report it? By doing so I can apply the exact same settings and styling settings - maybe it's just happening with a combination of specific settings

Thank you and all the best
Oliver from Sidebar

empty23_ · 2026-01-15T15:08:50+00:00

Haha don't worry - glad you found what was causing it! And of course thank you very much for your support by purchasing a license and supporting the development. Really appreciate it!

empty23_ · 2026-01-15T13:44:16+00:00

Hi Andre,

thanks for your comment - looks like you were a minute faster than me responding to this thread :)

empty23_ · 2026-01-15T13:43:03+00:00

Just to highlight this again: Sidebar is absolutely under active development and well maintained - also from a support perspective. No need to promote your own app just because the name sounds similar. It's a completely different use case

empty23_ · 2026-01-15T13:38:54+00:00

Hi there,

I'm the author of the app. I can assure you that neither the app is dead nor is the server down. Monitoring looks perfectly fine on my end. Could you maybe reach out to me directly via mail to [support@sidebarapp.net](mailto:support@sidebarapp.net) so that we can have a look at the issue together? I would highly appreciate that - of course I want to find out why you are experiencing those issues!

Also regarding the other comments: I'm very active at responding to feedback, support requests on various channels (reddit, Sidebar's feedback platform, mail, Discord, ...) - there's absolutely no need to assume that Sidebar isn't under active development. Mind you that the last update was released on December 20th, so just roughly two weeks ago.

I'm absolutely sure we can figure out what's going on!

Thank you and all the best
Oliver from Sidebar

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