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The problem with Bartender is that you are giving Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions to an unknown entity.
With Accessibility APIs you can control the Mac (including other apps). With Screen Recording APIs you can see everything that's happening.
Both of those things require trust, and the new owners being silent about the matter does not gain that.
I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole until that communication happens.
Also remember that Bartender is not running in a sandbox, so it has a lot more access to the system than something from the Mac App Store.
Like being able to establish network connections without entitlements. Or accessing data outside of the app's container.
And since it's likely the app launches automatically and runs continuously, it's trivial to exfiltrate anything that's collected.
At this point, it feels like someone bought a really nice back door.
@chockenberry are you aware of an alternative to bartender that just helps manage the menu bar? (Would love something else I use and trust like Alfred to add the feature.)
@JarrettUX @chockenberry I haven’t used it myself, but folks have been recommending Ice: https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice