Comparison
Awning vs Menu Bar Calendar
Menu Bar Calendar is free, it is on the same shelf as us, and it needs the same macOS 26. It is also, by its own description, intentionally simple. If simple is the whole requirement, it may well be enough. We would rather say so than have you find out after paying us.
Checked against the Mac App Store, 20 September 2026
The free one is enough if
What you want is to check what day of the week the 24th falls on, and you are happy opening Calendar.app for anything beyond that. Plenty of menu bar calendar users never look at an agenda. They want a date picker that is always there.
Awning if
You want to know what is on a day, not just which day it is. Menu Bar Calendar can show you the 24th exists. It cannot show you that you have three calls on it, or that the second is a Zoom you can join from here.
Awning
$0.99
once. One app, one menu bar slot
Menu Bar Calendar
Free
but you need two apps to get close
Side by side
| Feature | Awning | Menu Bar Calendar | Today |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 | Free | Free |
| Requires | macOS 26+ | macOS 26+ | macOS 26.1+ |
| Month grid | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Agenda for a day | ✓ | — | Today only |
| Month and agenda together | ✓ | — | — |
| Pick a future day, see events | ✓ | — | — |
| Join a video meeting | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Create events | Plain English | — | — |
| Search your events | ✓ | — | — |
| Change an event in place | ✓ | — | — |
| Alert before a meeting | ✓ | — | — |
| Menu bar slots used | One | One | One |
The part most people miss
The same developer also ships Today, free, which is the other half: today’s schedule in the menu bar, click an event to open it in Calendar.app, and a quick way to join an upcoming call. No month grid.
The free route to something like Awning is two apps and two menu bar icons, one for the month and one for the day. You still cannot see them together.
That last part is the whole point of the divider. Awning puts the month and the agenda in one panel with a handle between them. Drag up for a single week and a long agenda; drag down for the full month. It remembers how much room you gave it, per display.
When the free one is genuinely enough
If what you want is a date picker that is always there, install Menu Bar Calendar. It is free, it is good, and you will not need us. That is a real answer for a lot of people.
When it is not
The moment you want to know what is on a day rather than just which day it is. That is the gap, and no amount of month grid closes it.
And on Dato
The same developer’s paid app does far more than any of this: world clocks, reminders, fullscreen meeting alerts. It is $18.00. We have a separate comparison, and it concludes that if you work across time zones you should buy Dato.
Click the date. That’s the whole thing.
$0.99, once. No subscription, no account. Requires macOS 26 or later.
Awning is a Mac app. Open this page on your Mac to install.