It's extremely simple to use but adds so much convenience. I like that it does what it does well.

I've used XMenu for many years, because it's provided exactly the interface I want to access apps and other stuff.

But 1.9.2 brings what is, for me, a huge disadvantage. It no longer places its menus close to the right edge of the menu bar, where they're always accessible. Instead, it places them to the left of all (?) other menu extras. This usually has them hidden behind application menu items on my little 1280x800 MacBook screen. That means I have to switch to Finder or some other menu-light app before I can get access. For Snippets, it's deadly, as I can no longer easily paste them where I want because of having to switch out of the target application.

Try as I might, I can't get them to move to the right. I sorted XMenu to first position in my Login Items pref and logged out/in, no joy. The DEVONtechnologies XMenu forum has a similar issue posted April 1 by theorg, asking for advice/fix, with no response after a week.

I'll be trying to find 1.9.1 and reinstall.

Advice: if you have a small screen, stick with 1.9.1.

DOWNLOAD NOTE: Direct download link for XMenu 1.9.2: http://www.devon-technologies.com/files/XMenu.app.zip because as of 7:00 AM on March 20, the version downloading from this MacUpdate link is still 1.9.1.

XMenu is a GREAT free app that gives you super-fast, easy access to your files and apps, and I'm thrilled that DEVONtechnologies continues to develop it. I've been using it for years, but previous versions became too slow — I had to retire the Applications menu and replace it with Himmelbar because it started taking too long to open under OS 10.6.3+. Thankfully, version 1.9.2 was rewritten as 32/64-bit, so now it’s snappier by perhaps 15-20%. So, I re-rate it at 4.5 stars. The only things that could make it better would be a color preference for the menus, and even speedier operation of the Applications menu. But asking that of such a generous developer would be greedy!

I've been using XMenu for a few years and think it's a really great old app. However, as mentioned in my 7/15/10 review below, its v. 1.9.0 Applications menu had simply become t o o d a r n s l o w to render after clicking its icon. So, now I use Himmelbar as an Applications launcher and XMenu's Home and Snippets menus for those functions because they work better than any of the other 12 or so such apps available.

However, I just discovered that XMenu was updated to v. 1.9.1 in November 2010 after nearly 2 years of neglect, so I was hopeful that Devontechnologies had modernized it. But after trying it today, I was very disappointed to discover that it hadn't become even the slightest bit quicker, and in fact hadn’t improved one jot. The update’s description said that they’d added an alternate menu accessible by control-clicking one of its icons, but v. 1.9.0 already had that functionality, and I’ve been using it for more than 2 years! So I don’t know what the heck they were thinking when they made that statement.

So unfortunately, XMenu is STILL dying, and will continue to die until its developer rewrites it from the ground up to take advantage of several Leopard and Snow Leopard technologies that its current version simply ignores, making it one ulcerously slow waste of time. Shame, really.

I hope I'm wrong about this, but it seems like this developer has abandoned XMenu. That would be a shame because it's a very fine app, and the only thing keeping it from greatness is its sluggishness.

I think an effort to update XMenu for Snow Leopard would bring it back from the dead. Currently, a click on the XMenu 'Applications' menubar item results in a 3- to 6-second delay while it reads everything in the Applications folder before displaying them in a drop-down menu. If you click it again a short time afterward the delay is gone, but just a little while later it's back to its slothful ways.

I understand that this lethargy is partially caused by the large number of apps on my MacBook, but other such apps are a lot snappier than XMenu, like OpenMenu X, which was recently updated to work better on Snow Leopard, and which I now have to use instead of XMenu because it works almost instantaneously. Nevertheless, I'd jump right back aboard the XMenu bandwagon if it could be updated to work as quickly as other Snow Leopard menubar launchers.

For me as well, this bug described (from "Anonymous") on July 7th 2005 remains: the XMenu icon still appears in the extreme right corner, behind the spotlight icon(!) on start-up if the option "display on left from menu extras" is unset.

And I use custom icons, most of which are not displayed as such (Some are, other appear as generic).

Awesome program otherwise, perfect for OS 9 refugees or those willing to keep the dock as free as possible.
A nice tool I would not want to miss.