I use uBar for this: https://ubarapp.com but this looks like a nice lightweight alternative!

https://lawand.io/taskbar/ as well

and https://noteifyapp.com/activedock/, which is less extreme but has a start menu-like launcher option

Both have one-time/lifetime purchase options. Taskbar is $25 one-time with a free but expiring older version. ActiveDock's one-time prices are $15 (1 year of updates, but usable forever) and $60 (lifetime updates).

Thank you for mentioning my app (https://lawand.io/taskbar/). It's been around for a couple of years and it's considered the best alternative to uBar according to the extremely positive reviews by my users

Another alternative is https://hypercritical.co/switchglass/ ($10 upfront) really well done.

uBar looks amazing as well, and it’s not a subscription, I really like boringBar but can’t justify a subscription tho

Both are under 10MB, So I don't think there would be much difference.

I meant more in terms of featureset. uBar has a lot of features and it takes a while to get a setup that works well.

Once it's set up, though, it's pretty rock solid.