MenuBarUSB: connected USB devices in the macOS menu bar

A menu bar item that lists what is plugged in

MenuBarUSB is described as a simple and lightweight app that shows USB connections in the macOS menu bar, and the repository description puts it as a simple and reliable way to track USB devices directly in the menu bar. The scope is deliberately small, and the choice of placement is the point. macOS already has a place for this information in System Information, but that is a window you open and close, while a menu bar item is always one click away. That matters in the situations the app is actually useful for, plugging in a device that is not behaving, or telling a colleague which adapter is connected to which port. The project is written in Swift, is distributed as an Xcode project under the MenuBarUSB.xcodeproj directory, and is MIT licensed. The repository is not archived, the last push was on 2026-06-10, and the most recent tag is v3.5 from the same day.

Homebrew cask install, then the Gatekeeper click

Installation is the standard two step for a Homebrew cask, first the tap and then the cask:

brew tap rafaelswi/menubarusb

brew install --cask menubarusb

The one wrinkle is that macOS will not open the app on the first try, and the documentation names the exact message you will see, an Apple could not verify MenuBarUSB warning, along with the fix. You go to Settings, then Privacy and Security, scroll down, and click Open Anyway. This is the standard behaviour for an app that has not been signed and notarised by Apple, and it is worth knowing in advance rather than discovering it, because the warning looks alarming and the fix is buried in a settings pane that is not where people expect it. The project also points at a Homebrew cask, which means the updates and uninstalls go through the same tooling as the rest of your machine rather than through a separate installer, and the cask naming matches the app name, so the two line install is stable across versions.

The list is yours to arrange

The customisation section of the documentation is short, and its one sentence carries the feature. With MenuBarUSB, you can make your USB list your own. The screenshots in the repository show a menu bar panel with a longer list of entries than a default would carry, which suggests the app lets you decide what appears rather than forcing every attached device into the menu. For a desktop with a keyboard, a mouse, a hub and a display, that list gets long fast, and a menu bar item with a fixed contents quickly becomes a menu you scroll past without reading. Being able to curate the list is what turns the app from a curiosity into something you leave switched on. The documentation does not enumerate every option, so the exact controls are worth checking in the app itself rather than assuming a particular layout.

A support tool that records what happened

The more serious use of the app is described under technical support, where you can use MenuBarUSB as a technical support tool to analyze device activity. The app includes a built-in feature to review recorded activity, so the sequence is to let it run, look at what it recorded, and see the device events in order. That is a genuinely useful diagnostic for intermittent problems, a device that drops out when a cable is moved, or a hub that behaves differently depending on what is attached to it, because the alternative is asking a user to describe a symptom they cannot see. The same feature has a collaborative dimension. The companion MenuBarUSB Analysis Tool allows you to view exported logs from other Macs, and the documentation says this is particularly useful for examining logs from clients or colleagues who are experiencing issues with USB devices. In other words, one person records and exports, another opens the export and reads it, without either of them needing the other to install anything on a machine they do not control.

A separate tool for reading other people's logs

That split into two applications is a design decision rather than an accident of packaging. The main app records and exports, the analysis tool reads. Splitting them means the reader does not have to install the menu bar app on their own machine, and it means the analysis side can grow its own view format without changing what runs on the machine being diagnosed. The two projects live in separate repositories under the same account, so they can be versioned independently, and the analysis tool is the one to look at if you are the person who receives the log rather than the person who produces it. Neither of them is described as an open file format in the documentation, so if you plan to build your own tooling around the exports, check the export format first.

Independent of the app that inspired it

The credits section is careful and worth reading, because it covers a situation that regularly goes wrong. The main feature of listing connected USB devices was inspired by USB Connection Information, a paid application available on the App Store, and MenuBarUSB was initially conceived as an open source alternative to it. It has since evolved into an independent application with its own features. The documentation then states the separation explicitly, that MenuBarUSB has no affiliation or association with USB Connection Information, including any shared code, licensing or partnership, that MenuBarUSB is distributed under the MIT Licence whereas USB Connection Information is not, and that no code from that application is included in MenuBarUSB. On the release side the tags are v3.3 on 2026-04-07, v3.4 on 2026-04-09 and v3.5 on 2026-06-10, a pace that suggests active work on a small codebase, and the project is licensed under the terms of the MIT Licence with the licence file at the repository root.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt MenuBarUSB if you need to see which USB devices a Mac currently sees and want the answer in the menu bar rather than in System Information. Do not expect it to manage devices, since it only observes and logs them, and note the app is not notarised, so first launch needs the Open Anyway step in Privacy and Security.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. rafaelSwi/MenuBarUSB on GitHub
4. README
5. Releases