| Website | https://hacknicity.com/sfmenubar |
| App Store | https://apps.apple.com/app/id1615595104 |
| Press Kit | https://impresskit.net/sfmenubar |
Easy and Convenient · This is the best kind of app. It does one thing and it does it well. Having SFSymbols available quickly and easily may not change your life but it certainly makes development easier and quicker than digging around in the full SFSymbols app.
SF Menu Bar can also copy all the names (or unicode characters) of the symbols that are included in the search results. This is useful when viewing favorite symbols or using custom collections. Ctrl-Cmd-C (by default) will copy all the names.
The separator used when copying multiple names is configurable. A useful combination is to include quotation marks when copying a name and to use a comma and linefeed separator. This copies the names in a format that can be used to initialise an array.
The format of the symbol name that is copied is also configurable. The default is the underlying Apple SF Symbol name. This can optionally include surrounding quotation marks.
There are also formats for two type-safe SF Symbol libraries:
SFSafeSymbols (https://github.com/SFSafeSymbols/SFSafeSymbols).
PureSwiftUI (https://github.com/CodeSlicing/pure-swift-ui)
SFSafeSymbols is well-maintained and is almost up-to-date (it's missing symbols added in iOS 14.5 beta), but PureSwiftUI has not been updated in a while.
If you prefer to select a symbol with the mouse or trackpad, there are also preferences for controlling whether a click or a drag&drop will copy the symbol's name or unicode character.
Apple's SF Symbols app uses Cmd-C to copy the unicode and requires Shift-Cmd-C to copy the name. I would always forget the Shift, so SF Menu Bar defaults to the other way round on the assumption you most likely want to copy the name.
The modifiers used for copying a symbol's name or unicode character can be configured in Preferences if you prefer the Apple way or are usually copying the unicode symbols for use in a design tool.
To make it even faster to find and copy #sfSymbols, SF Menu Bar has some useful behavior.
The search text is preserved between opens but is pre-selected so that typing will overwrite it.
Hit tab to move focus between the search field and images. Use cursor keys to move the highlighted image. Hit Cmd-C or Return to copy the name and close SF Menu Bar. Shift-Cmd-C or Shift-Return copies the unicode symbol.
Cmd-return will open the context menu for a highlighted image. 🧵
An important feature of SF Menu Bar is its ability to view older #sfSymbols data sets for previous iOS/macOS versions. This hides symbols that were added later and will show/copy names that were valid back in that version.
If your app needs to support older iOS/macOS versions then you cannot use symbols or any newer names that were added after your minimum deployment version. Older names continue to work on later OS versions for backward compatibility.
The choice between browsing #sfSymbols data sets by iOS or macOS version also affects any deprecated names that are shown in the context menu and available for copying.
Depending on when a symbol was renamed (possibly more than once), there might be fewer names shown when browsing by macOS if a single macOS version included changes from multiple iOS versions.
SF Menu Bar v2.0 has just been released and adds support for choosing the different #sfSymbols data sets by macOS version.
There is not a one-to-one mapping between the different data sets in iOS and macOS. Sometimes multiple new data sets are rolled up into a single macOS release. This is why there are fewer separate data sets supported by macOS than iOS. My article on symbol changes in iOS 16.4 lists all the supported versions: https://hacknicity.medium.com/sf-symbols-changes-in-ios-16-4-876dad98f7c2
