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Admin Bartender

Current Version
1.0.0
Requires WordPress
6.5
Tested Up To
7.0
Features
Development plugin
Includes filters
Translations included
🇺🇸 English
🇪🇸 Spanish
🇫🇷 French
🇩🇪 German
🇨🇳 Chinese
🇯🇵 Japanese
Documentation

Admin Bartender helps site owners keep the WordPress admin bar focused without removing useful shortcuts entirely.

Administrators can choose a global default behavior for admin-bar items and then set item-level rules:

  • Always shown
  • Move under the three-dot menu
  • Always hidden

When personal overrides are enabled, users who can see the admin bar can customize their own layout from their WordPress profile. Personal rules override the global defaults for that user only.

Admin Bartender also includes workflow features inspired by the macOS Bartender app:

  • Quick Peek reveals hidden items while holding Option or Alt with the three-dot menu open.
  • Focus Mode temporarily collapses default items behind the three-dot menu while preserving anything marked Always shown.
  • Command Search adds a search field inside the three-dot menu for quickly finding tucked-away links.
  • Auto-Hide Bar slides the admin bar mostly out of view until it is needed.
  • Spotlight Shortcut opens the three-dot menu with Command+K or Ctrl+K.

Settings are available under Settings > Admin Bartender.

Changelog

1.0.0 (2026-05-25)

  • Add global admin-bar visibility rules for always shown, three-dot menu, and always hidden behaviors.
  • Add personal user overrides with an administrator control to disable overrides sitewide.
  • Add the Admin Bartender three-dot menu for tucked-away admin-bar items.
  • Add Quick Peek for temporarily revealing hidden items with the Option or Alt key.
  • Add Focus Mode for temporarily collapsing default items while preserving explicitly shown items.
  • Add Command Search for filtering items inside the three-dot menu.
  • Add Auto-Hide Bar for sliding the admin bar mostly out of view until needed.
  • Add Spotlight Shortcut for opening Admin Bartender with Command+K or Ctrl+K.
  • Add Discovery Scan for finding page-specific admin-bar items across common site contexts.
  • Add expanded Discovery Scan coverage for registered admin menu pages, add/edit screens, Customizer previews, author archives, search results, date archives, and cache-busted front-end requests.
  • Add browser-side admin-bar capture so items from visited pages and fetched scan markup are added to the settings inventory.
  • Add hierarchical admin-bar item settings with children indented under their parents.
  • Add live admin-bar previews and auto-save when item behaviors change.
  • Fix core Comments and Updates labels so notification counts do not appear in the settings list.
  • Fix WordPress.org and Support items so they appear under the main WordPress logo group.
  • Fix admin-bar item labels so text entities render as readable characters in settings.
  • Fix late-added admin-bar items so saved rules still move or hide them after the page finishes loading.
  • Remove account and user-menu items from Admin Bartender rules so they always remain visible.
  • Add Settings > Admin Bartender, plugin listing Settings link, profile controls, and uninstall cleanup.
  • Add German, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Japanese translation files.
  • Add compatibility guards, inline admin setup notes, and product-ready security hardening.
  • Document installation, configuration, user overrides, surprise features, uninstall behavior, and developer filters.