Bartender 5 alternatives

Hidden Bar does exactly one thing: it collapses the menu bar icons you do not need behind a chevron, and shows them again on click. No settings maze, no background agent doing mysterious work — a sub-10MB utility. It is the long-standing free pick for people who found Bartender overkill, and being on the Mac App Store means installation and updates are as safe as it gets. Free and open source from the Dwarves Foundation. If your menu...

Ice is the overwhelming r/macapps recommendation whenever Bartender comes up: it hides menu bar icons, shows them on hover or click, and offers a secondary bar — the core of what most people paid $22 for, free and open source. It rose fast after Bartender's silent change of ownership in 2024 spooked long-time users, and it has matured into a genuinely polished daily driver. Actively developed on GitHub with a healthy contributor...

Vanilla is the simplest tool in the menu bar category: drag icons behind the divider, click to reveal them. The free version covers basic hiding; Pro adds auto-hide, start at login and keyboard shortcuts for a small one-time payment. It is a repeat entry in Bartender-alternative lists for exactly that simplicity — no subscription, no permissions beyond what the job needs, from indie developer Matthew Palmer. If Ice feels like more...