Use This Free App to Clean up Your Mac’s Menu Bar
It’s funny that Apple still doesn’t offer a way to hide menu bar icons in macOS. Windows has had this option since the launch of Windows Vista 17 years ago , but Mac users who don’t want every icon cluttering the top of the screen will need to either hide the menu bar entirely or install a third-party app that can do the job.
Until recently, the menu bar service app of choice was Bartender, a $22 paid app that was generally highly respected. But last week , a change in ownership raised questions about the app’s privacy . These concerns are not entirely unfounded: the transfer occurred unnoticed, and the application in question requires access to the operating system to operate. Only time will tell if the issue is legitimate, but I’m grateful that user questions have brought Ice even more attention.
Ice is a free and open source Bartender alternative that does a great job of hiding icons. As with Bartender, you can drag icons while holding CMD to hide them. Any icon dragged to the left of the arrow icon will be hidden (most of the time).
In just a few minutes you can make your menu bar look neater.
Ice works very well. There’s even a second arrow that you can drag icons past without you even seeing them in the expanded view, which also allows you to stay organized. This is cool.
Ice also offers a few aesthetic tweaks that are worth mentioning. For example, you can bring back shadows or add a border to the menu bar. You can also optionally “split” the panel, which I find gimmicky, but it does allow you to see more of the wallpaper.
I’m a longtime Bartender user, but after using Ice for a week, I barely noticed a difference. Yes, there are a few missing features – you can’t choose to display certain icons only under certain conditions, which is available in Bartender. (I used this feature to only see the Time Machine icon while a backup was active, and only show the battery when I wasn’t connected to a power source – a nice option, but not required. And it’s worth noting that a similar feature is listed as a goal for Ice, which is an open source project, so we might have it soon.
Overall Ice is a great little app, especially considering it’s free. Check it out if you’re looking for a Bartender alternative or if you’ve never used Bartender and just want to tidy up your menu bar icons.