Hidden Bar Alternatives: Free Ways to Tame the Menu Bar

Hidden Bar does one thing well: it adds a divider to your menu bar, you drag the icons you rarely need behind it, and a click expands them again. It is free and open source. If you want an alternative because development has slowed, because you want more control, or because you would rather not run another background app, here are the real options.

The free app alternatives

• Ice — the most actively developed free option, and where a lot of Hidden Bar and Bartender users have landed. Same divider concept, more control over what shows when.
• Dozer — the original of this style. Still works for many people, but check its recent activity before adopting it on a new Mac.
• Bartender (paid) — worth mentioning because it solves a different problem: per-icon rules, showing an icon only when it changes, keyboard navigation and search. If you have a genuinely busy menu bar, that is a step up rather than a sideways move.

All of these need Screen Recording permission to read the menu bar. That surprises people. It is legitimate and it is how the category works, but it is a real permission and worth granting deliberately.

The no-app alternative that usually wins

Most people install a menu bar hider because a laptop notch is eating their icons. Two built-in changes often solve that outright.

Remove what you never click. System icons are managed in System Settings → Control Centre. Set Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sound, Battery, Now Playing, Focus and Screen Mirroring to Don't Show in Menu Bar. They all remain one click away inside Control Centre. Third-party icons are removed in each app's own settings, or by holding Command and dragging them off the bar.

Pack the rest closer together. macOS keeps a fixed amount of padding around every menu bar item. Reducing it fits several more icons in the same space, which on a notched MacBook is often the difference between "everything shows" and "icons vanish".

# tighter menu bar item spacing (log out and back in to apply)
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 8
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 6

# back to the macOS defaults
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding

Note the -currentHost flag. Without it the change does not take effect, which is why this one gets reported as "not working" so often.

Fix the source, not the symptom

Every icon on your menu bar belongs to something running. If you have never audited that list, do it now: System Settings → General → Login Items. Remove apps you do not need from boot, and check Allow in the Background underneath for helpers left behind by software you have already deleted. Fewer background apps means a shorter menu bar, a faster login and less running that you did not ask for.

What you give up by hiding rather than removing

A hidden icon is still an app running, still using memory, and still allowed to do whatever it was doing. Hiding is a visual fix. That is fine for things you genuinely use occasionally, such as a VPN client or a backup tool, and it is the wrong fix for software you no longer want.

Worth checking once a year: open Activity Monitor, sort by Memory, and look for background helpers you do not recognise. Cross-reference anything unfamiliar against System Settings → General → Login Items → Allow in the Background, where helpers register themselves. Uninstalling the parent app removes its icon permanently, with none of the trade-offs of hiding it.

Pick in this order

1. Turn off unused Control Centre items and prune login items. Free, instant, nothing installed.
2. Tighten the spacing if you are on a notched MacBook.
3. Only if icons still overflow, install Ice or stay on Hidden Bar.
4. Choose Bartender if you want rules rather than hiding.