Join video meetings from your Mac's menu bar
Although many workers are heading back to the office, video meetings are here to stay.
So I knew there had to be some apps out there that would help us quickly join meetings when we're not in our Daylite app: like when we're checking email, editing photographs, or deep in our web browser. Specifically, I was looking for a menu bar app for the Mac and I found three that I really like: Meeter, MeetingBar, and Itsycal.
💡Daylite users: these menu bar apps only read from the Mac's built in Calendar app, so you'll want to Install Daylite Calendar Profile in Daylite>Preferences>Calendar Integration>Daylite Calendar in Other Apps
I detail out my pros and cons for each below, but here's a quick video where you can see the difference of how they look:
Meeter
Overall, Meeter is my favorite of the three. I like it's clean interface, and the one-click Join button to join the meeting. Check out the screenshot at the end of the bullet points...if the meeting is a Zoom the button says Join Zoom Call; if it's a Google Meet the button changes accordingly. Clicking the button launches the appropriate video app and joins the meeting.
The Good
clean interface; I like the grey background bar behind each meeting
menu bar shows the title of the next meeting and a countdown
single click video icon to join video meeting
can choose to only show meetings with a video link, or show all
recognizes that a meeting is a video if the link is in the meeting's Location field or Details field
The Bad (meh, these don't bother me a bit)
number of days to show is limited to today, or 3 days, or 7 days, or 10 days
clicking on a meeting doesn't bring up a submenu where you can see more info
can't create meetings using this app (I recommend creating your Appointments in Daylite anyway so you get the benefit of Daylite's linking capability)
MeetingBar
MeetingBar is very close to Meeter. They share a similar interface ( I just personally like Meeter's better), and a one-click icon to join the meeting.
The Good
clean interface
menu bar shows the title of the next meeting, a countdown, and time remaining on current meeting
single click video icon to join video meeting
can choose to only show meetings with a video link, or show all
The Bad
only shows the video icon if the video link is in the meeting's Location field
number of days to show is limited to today, or today and tomorrow
The Neutral
can create meetings using this app but it's limited (I recommend creating your Appointments in Daylite anyway so you get the benefit of Daylite's linking capability)
Itsycal
Itsycal is a whole different beast! It's a full-fledged calendar view, conveniently located in your menu bar.
The Good
click-through calendar view with option to show dots under each date indicating how many meetings are on that date
number of days to show is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14, or 31 days
The Bad
multiple clicks to join a video meeting
only shows the video icon if the video link is in the meeting's Location field
The Neutral
because this is designed to show your whole calendar and not just focus on video meetings, no option to hide non-video meetings
can create meetings using this app (I recommend creating your Appointments in Daylite anyway so you get the benefit of Daylite's linking capability)
I'd love to hear what you think! Does something like this help you improve your workflow each day? Let me know in the Comments.
