The menubar is great place to access lightweight utilities, like our freeware app XMenu or DEVONthink’s Sorter. However, it is a finite space, further reduced by the notch on newer Apple laptops. We often get support requests saying our apps won’t run, but it often turns out the menubar is just overcrowded. Fortunately, there is a great utility to help clean things up.
Once considered the de facto choice for menubar management, Bartender is still available and a capable commercial option. However, there also is a very powerful free option: Ice by Jordan Baird. It supports:
Adding often used apps to the menubar while hiding others
Accessing the hidden apps in a floating toolbar, when needed
Adding custom styling including splitting the toolbar into different sections and applying color schemes
Spotlight-style searching for a running menubar app
Support for quick access via hotkeys
So if you run many menubar apps that you don’t interact with often, Ice is a nice way to hide them away and leave the others visible and ready to use.
By the way, though this is a free utility, you can also donate to Jordan and help support an indie developer and continued work on the project!
(Disclaimer: I rarely use the world clock since I stopped streaming my regular (mostly Apple ][-related) retrocomputing meetup. So the 27" menubar is usually enough, but I like the idea of decluttering anyway).
I used Bartender until the dev sold it to a suspicious company (Applause). I then immediately uninstalled it on all my Macs (The apps level of system privileges mean you must have a lot of trust in its developer). Hidden Bar looked like a potential replacement, but the developer, Dwarves Foundation, seems to be focused on other areas and it may now be abandonware.
After reading this article, I’ve decided to give Ice a try. It has to be better than resetting my screen resolution every time I need to access ALL my menu bar app icons, due to the notch.
Welcome @Beelzebub
I too have several notched Macs and too much going on in my menubar. I tried Ice last week and it’s becoming a staple. In fact, it may become the third app I will allow to launch at login. And yes, I only allow two currently.
Thank you for your post. Would you have an AppleScript or any other method to quickly access (ie equivalent to click on) specific menu bar items ? thanks
Menubar applications are often not scriptable, especially accessing them. And honestly, I think the time spinning your wheels to avoid a click here and there could be better spent on tasks with a better ROI
Sequoia now has a Menu Bar pane in Settings; it doesn’t have the bells and whistles of Bartender or Ice, but since Sequoia breaks both it’s currently the only option. The beta of Bartender 6 claims to work under Sequoia, and Setapp subscribers can supposedly access it by checking the beta box in Setapp’s Updates preferences, though I haven’t had any joy. Be aware that launching Bartender 5 under Sequoia will render your display unresponsive, though if you can manage to launch Activity Monitor it’s possible to quit it from there.
Casting no shade on the app, I have read quite a few comments about version 5 and 6 not working. Many were switching to Ice. Barbee was also mentioned.
