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Comment by mlangenberg | Hacker News Reader

I actually wonder how I can get them out?

Every background service wants some screen estate in the menu bar, but the app that I need is always hidden behind the notch of my MacBook. Why can’t I hide the ones I don’t frequently need?

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I use Hidden Bar to hide icons I don't want to see (some of my icons are company required software that I can't quit)

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hidden-bar/id1452453066?mt=12

Also available via Homebrew

I've been using hidden bar for over a year and it's working beautifully.

You can Command-Drag some of them off the menubar. It doesn't work in every case, but it might help. Plus there are tools like Ice and Bartender that help you hide most or all of them.

FOSS solution that's actually really good: https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice

You have to grant global Screen Recording permissions to use these menubar managing apps.

It's insane to grant that just to move some icons around.

If you see some other way to resolve this, I'm sure Ice welcomes contributions.

I don't think a project's core security concerns should be left up to my charity.

I get why they need the permission to implement their cutesy drag and drop interface.

But I'd like to hear why these apps can't continue to hide menu icons after you've revoked the permission. Ice and Bartender at least require you to grant it at all times last I looked a few months ago.

As far as I understand it works by grabbing screenshots of your menu bar and redrawing overtop of it. It can't do that if it doesn't have the permission to do screengrabs.

I deserve the downvotes for my first line, heh.

Maybe I can redeem myself by clarifying that the real frustration here is with bad macOS UX, not people trying to hack around it. I barked up the wrong tree.

Interesting. do all these apps work the same way? Apple does not provide any API's to modify the menubar?

Unless we're just waiting on someone to figure out another genius workaround, that's the case, yes. Macs are not Linux, for better and for worse.

To be honest it seems crazy at this point an overflow for menu bar items isn't built into macOS, especially now that all their laptops have this notch that can hide menu bar items if you have too many. Plus it competes with space with the dropdown menu items on the left since if an app has too many they'll wrap to the other side of the notch.

Theoretically it would work without this permission but it wouldn't be convenient: https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/discussions/362

Lots of good recommendations in replies.

Calling it out only because I don’t see it mentioned - until last year, Bartender was one of the popular go-to tools to manage menu bar items, but it fell from favor after quietly changing owners, changing certs, general shadiness https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/psa-bartender-mac-app-u...

A specific and relevant reminder why open source is so important for system utilities.

There are apps that help you hide unused menu bar apps - this one works well: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hidden-bar/id1452453066?mt=12

Many apps offer hiding their menubar icon as an option. I'm always looking for that option and I managed to get a super clean menubar[1] — without sacrificing features or apps I need. The “11m” icon is from a little gem called Aware[2].

[1] https://i.imgur.com/0AFL1rU.png [2] https://awaremac.com/

There’s a great app called Bartender that does this. I’ve been using it for over 10 years. Very stable.

You should know at some point in the past year or so it was silently sold to a shady company which makes me VERY wary for something I gave screen recording permissions to. I'd never install Bartender on my machine again.

There are several 3rd party utilities (free and paid) that allow status bar icons to be hidden

Interestingly, the site in question contains a relevant article:

https://badgeify.app/how-to-fix-mac-menu-bar-icons-disappear...

im a big fan of https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/

I am not! Bought the program about a month ago and it’s really buggy on MacOS 15. You can clearly tell that it was developed for some previous MacOS version and has been since then forgotten.

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