Swiftbar forgets the position of plugins

[andyearnshaw]

Describe the bug
Whenever I move the menubar icon for my plugin, Swiftbar seems to forget it the next time it opens. However, if I add another plugin and move that, the order of my original plugin appears to be preserved.

To Reproduce
It's easier to reproduce with Streamable plugins.

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Create streamable plugin using Deno, which outputs an image to the menubar
2. Relocate the icon in the menubar
3. Close and reopen Swiftbar
4. Observe that the icon position has reset

Expected behavior
The position of all plugins should preserve across restarts, disable/enable cycles and refreshes.

Screenshots

Original position (green T):

After restart:

Environment:

• macOS version: 15.7.1 (24G231)
• SwiftBar version: 2.0.1

Plugin Example:

Tilt plugin code (requires Deno)

#!/usr/bin/env /opt/homebrew/bin/deno
// <swiftbar.type>streamable</swiftbar.type>

import { readLines } from "https://deno.land/std@0.197.0/io/mod.ts";

let count = 0;

const update = () => {
  console.log("~~~");
  console.log("Test");
  console.log("---");
  // SwiftBar sends "myAction\n" over stdin
  console.log("Trigger Action | stdin=myAction");
  console.log(`Triggered | badge=${count}`);
};

const actions = {
  myAction: () => count++,
};

update();
for await (const action of readLines(Deno.stdin)) {
  actions[action]?.();
  update();
}

Additional Context:

• I don't run Bartender/Dozer/etc. or tested the issue without it running

[andyearnshaw]

Note that I did test without Hidden Bar running and still observe the issue.

[andyearnshaw]

To correct my original post, it does not matter if there is another plugin active or not. I've done some investigation and I've narrowed it down to the toggling of barItem.isVisible. In MenuBarItem.swift, we have _updateMenu() running the following code:

guard let scriptOutput = content,
      !scriptOutput.trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespacesAndNewlines).isEmpty || plugin?.lastState == .Loading
else {
    hide()
    return
}

For streamable plugins, I think there's a race condition on startup where the plugin content can be empty, which triggers the call to hide() (which, in turn, sets barItem.isVisible = false). The content then comes through which triggers the show() again but the position is lost. There also appears to be some intermittency throughout the lifecycle of the plugin where _updateMenu() is called and scriptOutput is an empty string, even though the stdout was previously parsed and the status item showing.

I'm still investigating when I get time, I will keep updating the thread as I find out more.

[andyearnshaw]

So I ran an experiment for a while. I commented out the implementations for the show() and hide() functions:

    func show() {
        // barItem.isVisible = true
    }

    func hide() {
        // barItem.isVisible = false
    }

When runnning SwiftBar with these commented out, the position of the items does not reset. However, when I restart SwiftBar, the positions may reset. So it is not the setting of isVisible that causes it, that just exacerbates the problem because that gets toggled occasionally for streamable plugins.