aight clanker

Agreed. I also like slash / to focus the primary input like on youtube

Here's another alternative: Itsycal

brew install itsycal

https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/

I like that you can customise the menu bar formatting, even adding custom messages.

This is my fav. There is also hidden bar https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden