Why do you have a 14-day money back guarantee instead of a 30-day free trial?
My perception (although I never tried it) is that it reduces the number of people actually trying it and avoids that you have to still pay for the payment platform fee when there is a refund, plus I presume there is also some dedication needed for handling the refund itself.
I speculate that there might be a sweet spot between the impulse purchase and the price level where you do not bother to ask for a refund, even if the tool does not work for you, but still it is counterintuitive for me why not to reach as many potential users as possible at a nearly zero marginal cost and sort of pray for conversion with a much higher user base.
In other words, at this price range with no recurring income, what is the percentage of users who actually to ask for a refund? Is it very low?
Hey there,
This topic always pops up from time to time.
First, when I started building macOS apps, the extra work of building a trial mechanism was something I wanted to keep for later.
Today, my key management backend already supports that, and when a user personally asks for a trial key, I give it to them.
But from my experience, when someone has a free trial, 2 thing can happen:
1. Download and never use
2. Use a little bit, stop using it, and leave the app without buying it.
When someone pays for the app, they try it most of the time immediately.
He explores the app, finds issues, and, because he paid for it, will be much more involved, which will provide me with much more accurate feedback.
Also, if something is not working well for him, he writes me, and I benefit from these interactions with the users.
A lot of my improvements for my apps are based on "Refund talks"
Overall, the upsides outweigh the downsides.
I don't have many refunds, but when I do, it really helps me improve the app.
I already had users who asked for a refund, and a few versions later, the app improved based on their feedback, and they repurchased it.
I am sure that some users don't buy without trying,
And this is why I am super responsive to refund requests and handle them faster and without "playing games" with this topic.
Maybe,
This has a lot of different opinions,
In SaaS, I can understand why you would give this trial version.
You can improve the onboarding and user progress tracking in the tunnel.
Making rapid updates and improving the onboarding process.
But for Mac apps that nothing is tracked or sent to my server, I have no idea what the user is doing or not doing with the app,
I can't roll out fast updates or even force users to get the newest version
So I won't be able to really improve it.
Maybe in my future Saas I will have some kind of trial.
But for now, I will stay with this model.
Anyway, thank you so much for the feedback,
Super appreciated!
I was speaking from experience selling single-fee end-user Windows apps for about a decade. Trials are basically a must as virtually no one would pre-buy to test.
Perhaps on Macs it's different, or maybe it's due to your price point, but still your approach automatically drives away a large swath of potential, but cautious buyers, or those who don't want to be bothered by the refund process. Your pitch is "here is some good stuff, and here are the hurdles if you want to test it".
I'm not affiliated with them, but I am a customer. They put a lot of effort into finding the right balance of what to unlock upfront in the trial. And their license/unlock process is pretty seamless.
I don't dispute the power of a free trial, but it can be a fair bit of work to get the details right.
I'm not the author, but generally: It could depend on whether those trial users are worth supporting. You could potentially get a free-rider problem. You could get a lot of support emails from people who never convert anyway.
It's only 10€, so it's pretty well in the impulse-buy category.
To the author: I'd suggest localising the currency, if possible. At least for English speaking locales (US, UK, CA, AU, NZ). The EUR pricing made it look to me like you might not be able to buy it if you're not in Europe. (Edit: I'm in Canada and it shows EUR, not CAD.)
I see you use Stripe. They have this Adaptative Pricing feature where you get paid in EUR and customer pays in their own currency. It has some drawbacks (fewer payment methods and higher cost perception for customer due to Stripe’s upfront currency exchange comission), but it can do the trick.
I really like the concept, however, I'm struggling to imagine using it over Alfred. The menu bar has a lot of limitations compared to an instantly available pop up. Could you share what specifically wasn't meet by Alfred and other quick search style solutions?
Thank you!
Actually, this is not replacing Alfred / Raycast.
I work with Raycase + ExtraBar together.
ExtraBar is really good for managing different tasks in the same app, since there's no direct way to set this up in Raycast/Alfred, and it's also a good place to "bookmark" your favorite Raycast/Alfred actions without having to open the full app.
Raycast provides a deeplink for every action in the app.
So I just take the actions that I use the most and put them in my ExtraBar.
I am working to build full macro creation inside ExtraBar, which will allow you to quickly run complex scripts that use different applications and actions in an easy, accessible way.
Let me know if you have any more question or wants to try it out
How does this work on laptop screens? E.g. running Chrome on my MBA with a notch, the Chrome menus take up 3/4 of the screen width, and then the remaining ~6 icons there is space for are utilities I need. There are even a couple more icons I regularly use and have to switch to Finder to access them, just because it has less menus. The idea is interesting, but it's not clear at all from the homepage how/if this works on laptops as opposed to large monitors, when you're using an application with lots of menus.
I'm also curious how this compares to other similar solutions -- QuickCMD, Raycast, Keyboard Maestro, Command Keeper, etc. It seems clear that its featureset is different, but it's hard to figure out which ones do which things. If you included a comparison features chart it might be helpful so potential customers can see what makes this one unique -- i.e. it's the only one that does X and Y and Z, because every other app only does 2 but not all 3.
Coming from Linux (involuntarily), the menu/tray implementation was one of the loudest UX issues I immediately discovered. Some functions can only be invoked from a system tray icon, and those actions can also be app/workspace-sensitive (like taking a screenshot with some special config using a screenshot tool). MacOS renders those functions inaccessible if the currently focused app has more than ~6 items in the menu.
Gosh, some apps even have menus so big, they don't fit on a single screen (btw, MacOS's solution is to compress the font, yeah, ask me how I know), leaving only the control center in the tray (which is completely useless in this scenario).
This is the first time I encounter a MacOS user who at least acknowledges the problem, albeit from a different angle: "you are displaying it wrong/your screen is too small".
Seeing as I'm not involved with developing macOS, I think it is?
> This is the first time I encounter a MacOS user who at least acknowledges the problem
Complaints about the menu bar icons are practically as old as the Mac itself. I don't know who doesn't acknowledge the problem. People have been complaining for decades now about having to buy Bartender to get around the problem.
Yes, the menu bar is a big issue.
So many useless icons and menus.
Because in macOS 26 it is easier to remove icons from the bar, I have added this "inline mode". A few users have already told me they removed everything and just put extra bar items, customized them however they want, so this makes it nicer.
Good question!
For that I built the floating mode for the app (You can see an example on the website)
You can hide and show it on demand with a simple hot key, of course, so it will be visible only when you need it.
Regarding the similar solution, we don't replace them, instead, we make them much more accessible and integrate with them amazingly well.
A lot of our users are saying that this app is the missing part for Keyboard Maestery and also a huge improvement for Raycast.
Because everything works with Deeplinks, it's super easy to integrate, and with the keyboard-only navigation options, everything is much faster.
Thanks. I think you just need to make this all clearer on the homepage!
The app looks cool but I think the big challenge is in demonstrating what makes it unique/better. You spend time comparing with icon managers, but that is not the competition. It would be much more helpful to me in understanding how it differs from the actual competition. And saying that it is the "missing part" or a "huge improvement" doesn't tell me anything factual.
Don't some of the competitors use keyboard triggers? Do they not also allow you to create deep links? Don't some of them also sit in the menu bar? This is why it's not immediately clear to me what specifically makes your product better. I'm assuming you have an answer, but that's where a feature comparison chart would really help.
Ok, I will try to explain this better
The main power of this app is that I am not trying to compete with them.
I work together with them.
For example, I put my ExtraBar RayCast deeplinks into a logical menu structure so they are easy to access and remember.
Instead of opening Raycast, looking for the actions, sometimes RayCast is opened on a different screen, so I need to go back, etc.
I just put the most used action on the ExtraBar menu and use simple keyboard navigation to trigger it.
The same goes for Keyboard Maestro.
I have this Reddit post that someone posted on ExtraBar:
https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1q0aqu6/extrabar_i...
That has some explanation of how he uses it, so this may be helpful to get more usecases example
Ok that's definitely helpful. At this point I'm not really asking questions here for you to answer on HN -- just more pointing out that these are the kinds of things your site needs to explain. What this competes with vs. what it works together with is a great angle.
I assumed ExtraBar was intended to be its own all-in-one solution for executing commands. Now that you say it also works together with other utilities, that changes my perception completely.
I may have missed it, but may I assume a device license is transferable? I mean to transfer it when I ditch my Mac for a new one, so I'm talking about my devices only. I'm just asking to be clear, especially given use of the word "lifetime". Thanks!
Cool project. I am working on something similar but was having a hard time with macOS permissions. I am not a Mac developer and not familiar with the space. I wasn’t even familiar with ray cast or things like that before I started. But I’ll definitely test this out and see if it solves what I was setting out to accomplish
Totally understand you!
I worked on 3 versions for a menu bar solution app.
This was so frustrating.
The first try was 5 months ago
Let me know if this helps you achieve your goal
I have a custom menu bar I wrote that integrates with Yabai and requires disabling SIP for full functionality, it works similarly to yours, but I love how simple and polished this one is.
How are you able to do that without OS permissions?
Thank you!
Glad you liked it
All of my apps are wiht permission free mindset,
So I try my best to find tricks and make everything work without them
For this one, I just removed the need to influence the real apps menu bar items. You build your own menu items, so I handle everything within this app without any permissions.
I explore writing ideas using various LLM tools,
This helps me build the text structure and gather ideas and information in one place.
I review everything, of course, and this is not just an automated process.
Same for this post,
I am combining my own natural tone while keeping some segguestion, like this line, that has a super "Marketing feel," and for that, the "GPT tone" is noticeable.
But I think this is nice information to put in this post, so I kept it
All my replies are manually typed, and I use Grammarly to fix typos and improve sentence structure.
Hey,
The price now for the launch month is 9.99 per device.
Prices will be different after it with bundle discounts (but still more than 9.99 per device)
I rounded up by 2 cents for the 2 devices and 3 cents for 3 devices to make the number nicer to read
Users can always buy 2 keys for 1 device separately and receive a 2-cent discount if they like to, I don't limit that option
I spotted the very underrated Bloom [1] in the screenshots and thought I should give it a shout in here. I've been using it, along with Witch [2] as an app switcher so that I can hide the Finder icon, for about 2 months and love it.
Why do you have a 14-day money back guarantee instead of a 30-day free trial?
My perception (although I never tried it) is that it reduces the number of people actually trying it and avoids that you have to still pay for the payment platform fee when there is a refund, plus I presume there is also some dedication needed for handling the refund itself.
I speculate that there might be a sweet spot between the impulse purchase and the price level where you do not bother to ask for a refund, even if the tool does not work for you, but still it is counterintuitive for me why not to reach as many potential users as possible at a nearly zero marginal cost and sort of pray for conversion with a much higher user base.
In other words, at this price range with no recurring income, what is the percentage of users who actually to ask for a refund? Is it very low?
Hey there, This topic always pops up from time to time. First, when I started building macOS apps, the extra work of building a trial mechanism was something I wanted to keep for later. Today, my key management backend already supports that, and when a user personally asks for a trial key, I give it to them. But from my experience, when someone has a free trial, 2 thing can happen: 1. Download and never use 2. Use a little bit, stop using it, and leave the app without buying it.
When someone pays for the app, they try it most of the time immediately. He explores the app, finds issues, and, because he paid for it, will be much more involved, which will provide me with much more accurate feedback.
Also, if something is not working well for him, he writes me, and I benefit from these interactions with the users. A lot of my improvements for my apps are based on "Refund talks" Overall, the upsides outweigh the downsides.
I don't have many refunds, but when I do, it really helps me improve the app. I already had users who asked for a refund, and a few versions later, the app improved based on their feedback, and they repurchased it.
I am sure that some users don't buy without trying, And this is why I am super responsive to refund requests and handle them faster and without "playing games" with this topic.
Hope this makes sense in some way
You are leaving a lot of money on the table.
The amount of people who do not want to pay upfront, but would buy after a trial, is not just substantial, but game changing.
You can also add the same pressure to test the app after installing by offering a 14 or even a 7 day trial.
Maybe, This has a lot of different opinions, In SaaS, I can understand why you would give this trial version. You can improve the onboarding and user progress tracking in the tunnel. Making rapid updates and improving the onboarding process. But for Mac apps that nothing is tracked or sent to my server, I have no idea what the user is doing or not doing with the app, I can't roll out fast updates or even force users to get the newest version So I won't be able to really improve it. Maybe in my future Saas I will have some kind of trial. But for now, I will stay with this model. Anyway, thank you so much for the feedback, Super appreciated!
I was speaking from experience selling single-fee end-user Windows apps for about a decade. Trials are basically a must as virtually no one would pre-buy to test.
Perhaps on Macs it's different, or maybe it's due to your price point, but still your approach automatically drives away a large swath of potential, but cautious buyers, or those who don't want to be bothered by the refund process. Your pitch is "here is some good stuff, and here are the hurdles if you want to test it".
The apps by Rogue Amoeba on Mac are a great example of the trial model on Mac: https://www.rogueamoeba.com
I'm not affiliated with them, but I am a customer. They put a lot of effort into finding the right balance of what to unlock upfront in the trial. And their license/unlock process is pretty seamless.
I don't dispute the power of a free trial, but it can be a fair bit of work to get the details right.
Thank you :) Got your point, Maybe I will give it a try for a month and see how it goes.
I'm not the author, but generally: It could depend on whether those trial users are worth supporting. You could potentially get a free-rider problem. You could get a lot of support emails from people who never convert anyway.
It's only 10€, so it's pretty well in the impulse-buy category.
To the author: I'd suggest localising the currency, if possible. At least for English speaking locales (US, UK, CA, AU, NZ). The EUR pricing made it look to me like you might not be able to buy it if you're not in Europe. (Edit: I'm in Canada and it shows EUR, not CAD.)
Thank you for the suggestion! I need to handle this multi-currency in all of my products This is on my tasks list
I see you use Stripe. They have this Adaptative Pricing feature where you get paid in EUR and customer pays in their own currency. It has some drawbacks (fewer payment methods and higher cost perception for customer due to Stripe’s upfront currency exchange comission), but it can do the trick.
Great, thanks. Very interesting product. Best of luck!
Thank you
Just provide limited support to non-paying customers. Keep it forum-based, for example. That's it.
I really like the concept, however, I'm struggling to imagine using it over Alfred. The menu bar has a lot of limitations compared to an instantly available pop up. Could you share what specifically wasn't meet by Alfred and other quick search style solutions?
Thank you! Actually, this is not replacing Alfred / Raycast.
I work with Raycase + ExtraBar together.
ExtraBar is really good for managing different tasks in the same app, since there's no direct way to set this up in Raycast/Alfred, and it's also a good place to "bookmark" your favorite Raycast/Alfred actions without having to open the full app.
Raycast provides a deeplink for every action in the app. So I just take the actions that I use the most and put them in my ExtraBar.
I am working to build full macro creation inside ExtraBar, which will allow you to quickly run complex scripts that use different applications and actions in an easy, accessible way.
Let me know if you have any more question or wants to try it out
How does this work on laptop screens? E.g. running Chrome on my MBA with a notch, the Chrome menus take up 3/4 of the screen width, and then the remaining ~6 icons there is space for are utilities I need. There are even a couple more icons I regularly use and have to switch to Finder to access them, just because it has less menus. The idea is interesting, but it's not clear at all from the homepage how/if this works on laptops as opposed to large monitors, when you're using an application with lots of menus.
I'm also curious how this compares to other similar solutions -- QuickCMD, Raycast, Keyboard Maestro, Command Keeper, etc. It seems clear that its featureset is different, but it's hard to figure out which ones do which things. If you included a comparison features chart it might be helpful so potential customers can see what makes this one unique -- i.e. it's the only one that does X and Y and Z, because every other app only does 2 but not all 3.
> How does this work on laptop screens?
Offtop: but is this the right question to ask?
Coming from Linux (involuntarily), the menu/tray implementation was one of the loudest UX issues I immediately discovered. Some functions can only be invoked from a system tray icon, and those actions can also be app/workspace-sensitive (like taking a screenshot with some special config using a screenshot tool). MacOS renders those functions inaccessible if the currently focused app has more than ~6 items in the menu.
Gosh, some apps even have menus so big, they don't fit on a single screen (btw, MacOS's solution is to compress the font, yeah, ask me how I know), leaving only the control center in the tray (which is completely useless in this scenario).
This is the first time I encounter a MacOS user who at least acknowledges the problem, albeit from a different angle: "you are displaying it wrong/your screen is too small".
> Offtop: but is this the right question to ask?
Seeing as I'm not involved with developing macOS, I think it is?
> This is the first time I encounter a MacOS user who at least acknowledges the problem
Complaints about the menu bar icons are practically as old as the Mac itself. I don't know who doesn't acknowledge the problem. People have been complaining for decades now about having to buy Bartender to get around the problem.
Yes, the menu bar is a big issue. So many useless icons and menus. Because in macOS 26 it is easier to remove icons from the bar, I have added this "inline mode". A few users have already told me they removed everything and just put extra bar items, customized them however they want, so this makes it nicer.
Good question! For that I built the floating mode for the app (You can see an example on the website) You can hide and show it on demand with a simple hot key, of course, so it will be visible only when you need it.
Regarding the similar solution, we don't replace them, instead, we make them much more accessible and integrate with them amazingly well. A lot of our users are saying that this app is the missing part for Keyboard Maestery and also a huge improvement for Raycast.
Because everything works with Deeplinks, it's super easy to integrate, and with the keyboard-only navigation options, everything is much faster.
If you have any more questions feel free to ask
Thanks. I think you just need to make this all clearer on the homepage!
The app looks cool but I think the big challenge is in demonstrating what makes it unique/better. You spend time comparing with icon managers, but that is not the competition. It would be much more helpful to me in understanding how it differs from the actual competition. And saying that it is the "missing part" or a "huge improvement" doesn't tell me anything factual.
Don't some of the competitors use keyboard triggers? Do they not also allow you to create deep links? Don't some of them also sit in the menu bar? This is why it's not immediately clear to me what specifically makes your product better. I'm assuming you have an answer, but that's where a feature comparison chart would really help.
Ok, I will try to explain this better The main power of this app is that I am not trying to compete with them. I work together with them. For example, I put my ExtraBar RayCast deeplinks into a logical menu structure so they are easy to access and remember. Instead of opening Raycast, looking for the actions, sometimes RayCast is opened on a different screen, so I need to go back, etc. I just put the most used action on the ExtraBar menu and use simple keyboard navigation to trigger it. The same goes for Keyboard Maestro. I have this Reddit post that someone posted on ExtraBar: https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1q0aqu6/extrabar_i... That has some explanation of how he uses it, so this may be helpful to get more usecases example
Ok that's definitely helpful. At this point I'm not really asking questions here for you to answer on HN -- just more pointing out that these are the kinds of things your site needs to explain. What this competes with vs. what it works together with is a great angle.
I assumed ExtraBar was intended to be its own all-in-one solution for executing commands. Now that you say it also works together with other utilities, that changes my perception completely.
Thank you so much for the feedback, Your questions are totally helpful, I will make it clearer on the website based on your feedback
I may have missed it, but may I assume a device license is transferable? I mean to transfer it when I ditch my Mac for a new one, so I'm talking about my devices only. I'm just asking to be clear, especially given use of the word "lifetime". Thanks!
Yes sure You can manage the connected device using my keyper platform: https://keyper.appitstudio.com/device-management/request
Cool project. I am working on something similar but was having a hard time with macOS permissions. I am not a Mac developer and not familiar with the space. I wasn’t even familiar with ray cast or things like that before I started. But I’ll definitely test this out and see if it solves what I was setting out to accomplish
Totally understand you! I worked on 3 versions for a menu bar solution app. This was so frustrating. The first try was 5 months ago Let me know if this helps you achieve your goal
I use hammerspoon for this but if you don't want to write your own scripts this might be nice.
Let me know if you try it I will add many more built-in actions in the app, for example, to run scripts, trigger api calls, and more
I'll check this out! I've been using doll for a while, but I don't think it's maintained anymore.
https://github.com/xiaogdgenuine/Doll
Nice! Didn't know about it. ExtraBar doesn't add the notifications to the apps, but it will give youa fully customized menu for them
Ah! I misunderstood your product :) Notifications would be an awesome feature to add
I will definitely think about it
I love this!
I have a custom menu bar I wrote that integrates with Yabai and requires disabling SIP for full functionality, it works similarly to yours, but I love how simple and polished this one is.
How are you able to do that without OS permissions?
Thank you! Glad you liked it All of my apps are wiht permission free mindset, So I try my best to find tricks and make everything work without them For this one, I just removed the need to influence the real apps menu bar items. You build your own menu items, so I handle everything within this app without any permissions.
Love the 9 euros for a lifetime sub. Easiest purchase ever even if I don't use it. Looks great.
Thank you This is always my launch price, and then it will stay as a 1 Year price. Hope you will enjoy using it Let me know what you think
Tangent: “ No permissions. No telemetry. Just local actions.”
That phrasing is so GPT coded. Same for other portions of the text.
Just feeling curious that the tone is there, not judging your usage of tools.
I explore writing ideas using various LLM tools, This helps me build the text structure and gather ideas and information in one place. I review everything, of course, and this is not just an automated process. Same for this post, I am combining my own natural tone while keeping some segguestion, like this line, that has a super "Marketing feel," and for that, the "GPT tone" is noticeable. But I think this is nice information to put in this post, so I kept it All my replies are manually typed, and I use Grammarly to fix typos and improve sentence structure.
Why is it more expensive to buy multiple license at once?
Hey, The price now for the launch month is 9.99 per device. Prices will be different after it with bundle discounts (but still more than 9.99 per device) I rounded up by 2 cents for the 2 devices and 3 cents for 3 devices to make the number nicer to read Users can always buy 2 keys for 1 device separately and receive a 2-cent discount if they like to, I don't limit that option
Cool will check it out.
Thank you! Let me know what you think
I spotted the very underrated Bloom [1] in the screenshots and thought I should give it a shout in here. I've been using it, along with Witch [2] as an app switcher so that I can hide the Finder icon, for about 2 months and love it.
[1] https://bloomapp.club
[2] https://manytricks.com/witch/
Nice! And yes Bloom is great
See also XBar
Didn't know about it! Looks really nice I loved the plugins ecosystem
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