Attach a native tray context menu to your menubar app - electron-menubar

electron-menubar can attach a native Electron Menu to the tray icon through the contextMenu option. The library handles the platform differences, so left-click still toggles the window where possible. Pass the menu as contextMenu:

main.js

const { app, Menu } = require('electron');
const { menubar } = require('electron-menubar');

app.on('ready', () => {
  const contextMenu = Menu.buildFromTemplate([
    { label: 'Item1', type: 'radio' },
    { label: 'Item2', type: 'radio' },
    { label: 'Item3', type: 'radio', checked: true },
    { label: 'Item4', type: 'radio' },
    { type: 'separator' },
    { role: 'quit' },
  ]);

  // Pass `contextMenu` to menubar — it wires `setContextMenu` on Linux and
  // `popUpContextMenu` on right-click on macOS/Windows so left-click still
  // toggles the menubar window.
  const mb = menubar({ contextMenu });

  mb.on('ready', () => {
    console.log('Menubar app is ready.');
    // your app code here
  });
});

Platform behavior

Linux
macOS and Windows

The menu is bound via tray.setContextMenu (required by libappindicator / StatusNotifierItem) and re-published on every show/hide to defeat the indicator’s menu cache.

The menu pops up on right-click via tray.popUpContextMenu, so left-click continues to toggle the window. Combine with trigger: 'none' if you want right-click to be the only interaction.

Method	Description
`setContextMenu(menu)`	Replace the tray context menu (auto-re-publishes on Linux).
`refreshContextMenu()`	Re-publish the current context menu after mutating its items in place. Required on Linux, a no-op elsewhere.

See the native menu example for a complete app.