9 ms·

Hidden Bar: macOS utility to hide unused menu bar icons, written in Swift

133 points by luckman212 7y ago

gtmtg 7y ago
For anyone who's wondering how it works: key line of code seems to be here (https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden/blob/develop/hidden/ViewControlllers/StatusBarController.swift#L102 https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden/blob/develop/hidden/ViewC...), where they make the "separator" element really wide to push the icons to be hidden offscreen.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Apparently that trick is used in other, similar tools: https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer/blob/master/Dozer/StatusIconClasses/HelperStatusIcon.swift#L10 https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer/blob/master/Dozer/StatusIc...
- btown 7y ago
  So I imagine then that this relies on operating system behavior that says "show as many icons as we can fit, if we go over our limit hide the rest and right-justify the ones that did fit" - so therefore by controlling the width they can change that breakpoint?
docdeek 7y ago
An alternative to Bartender?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  This just seems to add spacers. Edit: it apparently hides icons as well, though it does them differently than Bartender.
Copenjin 7y ago
Thanks for making the code public, but since it's the first time I see something like this, I don't see why you shouldn't slap a $5 price tag on it on the Appstore :)
- WaltPurvis 7y ago
  Maybe the author doesn't want the hassle of supporting commercial software or just feels like giving it away. At any rate, Bartender has been around for years, works great, and has a ton more features.
  - Copenjin 7y ago
    My comment was an invite to monetize, regardless of the motivations he could have, right now.
reimertz 7y ago
This looks like a light version of the Vanilla app [1] but free and open source. Also, a clever solution to hide the unused icons! [1]https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/ https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I don’t think this one hides icons.
  - xwowsersx 7y ago
    It doesn't hide unused ones, but it does hide menu items.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Ah, so it does. I just didn’t see the end of the GIF.
shadowsock 7y ago
Dozer (https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer) is also open source
cerberusss 7y ago
I wonder what happens if you drag the | button past the > hide buttom and then click hide :)
milani 7y ago
Why "written in Swift" is of any importance to be in the title?
- e1ven 7y ago
  Its OSS. The language is good to know for anyone who might be interested in assisting.
- Razengan 7y ago
  The same reason other projects mention "in Rust" "in Haskell" etc.
  - milani 7y ago
    Well, I dont get them as well.
    - Razengan 7y ago
      Do you get it when some app or game says which operating system it's for?
      - cassianoleal 7y ago
        Apples and oranges. As a user, I need to know which operating system an app runs on, otherwise I might not be able to run it. The language used to write it plays no role in that.
        Razengan 7y ago
        This is an open source project, where you need to know if you know how to edit/fix/compile it if needed.
        dividedbyzero 7y ago
        I use (directly or indirectly) thousands of OS projects. I can do those things for a handful, and maybe a few dozen in theory. I wouldn't stop using lots of great utilities just because I don't know Go.
Angostura 7y ago
I just commmand-drag the ones I don't want to the Trash and they're gone.
- crazygringo 7y ago
  What, what?! You're right... how have I used Macs for decades and never known this! Does that always work for third-party icons too? They don't get re-added every time you start up or anything? (Curious what you do if you change your mind and want one back.)
  - npongratz 7y ago
    > (Curious what you do if you change your mind and want one back.) If you want to add an application's icon to the dock, find it in the Finder and drag the icon onto the dock.
    - dmd 7y ago
      The dock is not the menu bar.
      - npongratz 7y ago
        Ah, thank you! I forgot the context. I am sorry!
stinos 7y ago
Reading the title I interpreted this as "utility which figures out which icons you hardly use and puts them away". That's not what this does, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless. I wonder if this has been implemented somewhere (don't care which OS). I.e. I see a lot of desktop software which defaults to discoverability (well, I think that is the choice made): show the user a wealth of menus and buttons and status bars. Then in reality the user uses 1% of these buttons, and the rest is just there eating screen space. For writing, programming and graphic design this can be quite a lot of space. Automatically shrinking that space by removing buttons the user never used after months could help some users a bit I think. It's not the first time I encounter people complaining about screen estate while sitting in front of an unconfigured Visual Studio instance with menu bar, 2 rows of buttons and status bar all on. That's like 5 lines of code, depending on font. (and if you point to random icons and ask 'what does this button do?' they don't know, so it really is a waste)
- gmueckl 7y ago
  This is exactly what MS tried with Windows and Office in the late 90s. People hated it and MS has since removed this automatic adaption completely. Office menus in particular took on a shortened form with only the most used items. You had to explicitly expand them to see the remaining items that Office considered irrelevant to you. This has two major problems: the UI became incomsistemt between users, too dynamic and therefore comfusing. Amd even though users used a particular 1% subset of an Office program today, it would be a different subset the next day or the next week. This sent them constantly hunting for menu items that "should be there". All of this was replaced with the ribbons makeover. Now, the interface is not adapting to the user, but to the current context. Although I don't like that interface very much, it is at least less surprising.
- _jal 7y ago
  Personally, I hate it when applications seemingly randomly alter the interface. It breaks my memory of where things are; I have to stop and stare at things to figure out what happened and where that icon went. It is like having a "helper" who hides your tools.
  - 7y ago
gattilorenz 7y ago
AppStore link: https://apps.apple.com/it/app/hidden-bar/id1452453066?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/it/app/hidden-bar/id1452453066?mt=12 If the author is reading: the link on top of the github page is broken.
bflesch 7y ago
Happy MacOS users.. In linux land, we have gnome shell which simply removed support for menubar icons and have never re-added the functionality since. Goodbye dropbox, slack, skype menubar icons. Try using some hacks to see their icons again. I'm very bitter about this.
- danieldk 7y ago
  Me too. And the extensions are quite buggy. gnome-shell crashes less often since I've removed them. But now I end up with inaccessible (except by launching the app again) Skype, Spotify, etc. instances. This behavior is also difficult to understand for novice users. I understand that the implementation of systray icons were a hack. But don't remove basic functionality until there is a supported replacement. On the other hand, this should not have come as a surprise. They have also removed menus and replaced them by incomplete, unusable hamburger menus. /grumpy GNOME user
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    What do systray icons give you that simply keeping the windows open on a spare virtual desktop doesn't? Notifications ought to be still supported, right?
- noisem4ker 7y ago
  Unhappy Linux users, start appreciating the variety of choices you have in terms of desktop environments. You don't have to suffer because you feel subjugated by GNOME. I suggest trying KDE for a while, if you want to know what being treated as a competent user feels like.
  - BoorishBears 7y ago
    Unhappy Linux users, try a MacBook! POSIX without being a POS
    - ben-schaaf 7y ago
      Not gp, but I'd love to run OSX legally, even if just for testing. But their hardware doesnt fit my requirements, nor is it a good value for money.
sbr464 7y ago
I use bartender, it's worked great. Will check this one out also. Hard to go back to clutter after using tools like these. https://www.macbartender.com/ https://www.macbartender.com/
givinguflac 7y ago
This is great! Bartender works well but I never wanted to buy it for something so trivial. Thanks dev!
- gregoriol 7y ago
  Bartender is a big bit more advanced than this implementation, but it's nice to see some competition!
mshafer 7y ago
Love how you've hacked the purpose of menu bar buttons to create such a simple user interface - no separate menus or configuration, just drag things around!
jakobmi 7y ago
Tiny improvement suggestion: remove the "collapse" button and show the residual items on mouse hover of any of the top right menu bar area automatically. Save me the extra clicks. That would be exceptional user design :) Right now, it's not worth the extra 2 clicks for "a cleaner look", so I did not download
toomim 7y ago
Wow. What I always liked about MacOS was that there weren't too many menubar icons to begin with. Back in the days of Windows 98, it became typical for every application you installed to make a little icon in the "System Tray". Each app wanted to advertise itself and its (usually useless) features. The System Tray became a dustbin of crap. Eventually windows had to auto-hide them, just like you do with a dustbin. Windows also burdened users with useless notifications, for things like "Battery charged!" and "Battery at 80%", that would constantly distract you. This happened so much that PhDs in Computer Science wrote entire dissertations and approaches to use machine learning to determine the optimal time to interrupt the user with notifications, in an attempt to intelligently unburden users from this nonsense. (http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/hcii/CMU-HCII-06-100.pdf http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/hcii/CMU-HCII-06-...) OSX solved this problem by abstaining from those useless notifications and icons to begin with. They didn't provide an API for app developers to add menubar icons. So few did. But then developers wrote hacks to do so. Now there are so many that they've become a dustbin again, and we need a new app to hide them. It's Windows 98 all over again. Here's an idea -- if you are noticing useless menubar icons, get rid of them. Don't invent a new icon, that has the ability to hide other icons, and then try to come up with a UI (or machine learning system) to discern which icons need to be shown and hidden. Just get the design right in the first place. Ahh... I know I know... Steve Jobs is dead... and now the whole philosophy of getting the design right is a minority opinion. sigh
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  NSStatusItem has been in OS X since at least 2008 http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.24/24.07/NSStatusitem/index.html http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.24/24.07/NS... So I have a hard time seeing how you blame menu bar icons on Steve Job’s absence.
nyxtom 7y ago
Haha, I’m glad I’m not the only one who wanted this! Nice work
samat 7y ago
brew cask, anyone?
Corrado 7y ago
This looks really cool, not quite as functional as Bartender but definitely more affordable. However, I'm really looking for a way to hide app icons in the Dock and/or fast switch dialog. Things like my VPN connection or Anti-Virus program are always showing up when I Alt+tab between programs and it's annoying. Is there a simple, native way to hid those things?

133 points by luckman212 7y ago

For anyone who's wondering how it works: key line of code seems to be here (https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden/blob/develop/hidden/ViewControlllers/StatusBarController.swift#L102 https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden/blob/develop/hidden/ViewC...), where they make the "separator" element really wide to push the icons to be hidden offscreen.

tyingq 7y ago
Apparently that trick is used in other, similar tools: https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer/blob/master/Dozer/StatusIconClasses/HelperStatusIcon.swift#L10 https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer/blob/master/Dozer/StatusIc...
btown 7y ago
So I imagine then that this relies on operating system behavior that says "show as many icons as we can fit, if we go over our limit hide the rest and right-justify the ones that did fit" - so therefore by controlling the width they can change that breakpoint?

docdeek 7y ago

An alternative to Bartender?

saagarjha 7y ago
This just seems to add spacers. Edit: it apparently hides icons as well, though it does them differently than Bartender.

Copenjin 7y ago

Thanks for making the code public, but since it's the first time I see something like this, I don't see why you shouldn't slap a $5 price tag on it on the Appstore :)

WaltPurvis 7y ago
Maybe the author doesn't want the hassle of supporting commercial software or just feels like giving it away. At any rate, Bartender has been around for years, works great, and has a ton more features.
- Copenjin 7y ago
  My comment was an invite to monetize, regardless of the motivations he could have, right now.

reimertz 7y ago

This looks like a light version of the Vanilla app [1] but free and open source. Also, a clever solution to hide the unused icons! [1]https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/ https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/

saagarjha 7y ago
I don’t think this one hides icons.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  It doesn't hide unused ones, but it does hide menu items.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Ah, so it does. I just didn’t see the end of the GIF.

shadowsock 7y ago

Dozer (https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer) is also open source

cerberusss 7y ago

I wonder what happens if you drag the | button past the > hide buttom and then click hide :)

milani 7y ago

Why "written in Swift" is of any importance to be in the title?

e1ven 7y ago
Its OSS. The language is good to know for anyone who might be interested in assisting.
Razengan 7y ago
The same reason other projects mention "in Rust" "in Haskell" etc.
- milani 7y ago
  Well, I dont get them as well.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    Do you get it when some app or game says which operating system it's for?
    - cassianoleal 7y ago
      Apples and oranges. As a user, I need to know which operating system an app runs on, otherwise I might not be able to run it. The language used to write it plays no role in that.
      - Razengan 7y ago
        This is an open source project, where you need to know if you know how to edit/fix/compile it if needed.
        dividedbyzero 7y ago
        I use (directly or indirectly) thousands of OS projects. I can do those things for a handful, and maybe a few dozen in theory. I wouldn't stop using lots of great utilities just because I don't know Go.

Angostura 7y ago

I just commmand-drag the ones I don't want to the Trash and they're gone.

crazygringo 7y ago
What, what?! You're right... how have I used Macs for decades and never known this! Does that always work for third-party icons too? They don't get re-added every time you start up or anything? (Curious what you do if you change your mind and want one back.)
- npongratz 7y ago
  > (Curious what you do if you change your mind and want one back.) If you want to add an application's icon to the dock, find it in the Finder and drag the icon onto the dock.
  - dmd 7y ago
    The dock is not the menu bar.
    - npongratz 7y ago
      Ah, thank you! I forgot the context. I am sorry!

stinos 7y ago

Reading the title I interpreted this as "utility which figures out which icons you hardly use and puts them away". That's not what this does, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless. I wonder if this has been implemented somewhere (don't care which OS). I.e. I see a lot of desktop software which defaults to discoverability (well, I think that is the choice made): show the user a wealth of menus and buttons and status bars. Then in reality the user uses 1% of these buttons, and the rest is just there eating screen space. For writing, programming and graphic design this can be quite a lot of space. Automatically shrinking that space by removing buttons the user never used after months could help some users a bit I think. It's not the first time I encounter people complaining about screen estate while sitting in front of an unconfigured Visual Studio instance with menu bar, 2 rows of buttons and status bar all on. That's like 5 lines of code, depending on font. (and if you point to random icons and ask 'what does this button do?' they don't know, so it really is a waste)

gmueckl 7y ago
This is exactly what MS tried with Windows and Office in the late 90s. People hated it and MS has since removed this automatic adaption completely. Office menus in particular took on a shortened form with only the most used items. You had to explicitly expand them to see the remaining items that Office considered irrelevant to you. This has two major problems: the UI became incomsistemt between users, too dynamic and therefore comfusing. Amd even though users used a particular 1% subset of an Office program today, it would be a different subset the next day or the next week. This sent them constantly hunting for menu items that "should be there". All of this was replaced with the ribbons makeover. Now, the interface is not adapting to the user, but to the current context. Although I don't like that interface very much, it is at least less surprising.
_jal 7y ago
Personally, I hate it when applications seemingly randomly alter the interface. It breaks my memory of where things are; I have to stop and stare at things to figure out what happened and where that icon went. It is like having a "helper" who hides your tools.
- 7y ago

gattilorenz 7y ago

AppStore link: https://apps.apple.com/it/app/hidden-bar/id1452453066?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/it/app/hidden-bar/id1452453066?mt=12 If the author is reading: the link on top of the github page is broken.

bflesch 7y ago

Happy MacOS users.. In linux land, we have gnome shell which simply removed support for menubar icons and have never re-added the functionality since. Goodbye dropbox, slack, skype menubar icons. Try using some hacks to see their icons again. I'm very bitter about this.

danieldk 7y ago
Me too. And the extensions are quite buggy. gnome-shell crashes less often since I've removed them. But now I end up with inaccessible (except by launching the app again) Skype, Spotify, etc. instances. This behavior is also difficult to understand for novice users. I understand that the implementation of systray icons were a hack. But don't remove basic functionality until there is a supported replacement. On the other hand, this should not have come as a surprise. They have also removed menus and replaced them by incomplete, unusable hamburger menus. /grumpy GNOME user
- zozbot234 7y ago
  What do systray icons give you that simply keeping the windows open on a spare virtual desktop doesn't? Notifications ought to be still supported, right?
noisem4ker 7y ago
Unhappy Linux users, start appreciating the variety of choices you have in terms of desktop environments. You don't have to suffer because you feel subjugated by GNOME. I suggest trying KDE for a while, if you want to know what being treated as a competent user feels like.
- BoorishBears 7y ago
  Unhappy Linux users, try a MacBook! POSIX without being a POS
  - ben-schaaf 7y ago
    Not gp, but I'd love to run OSX legally, even if just for testing. But their hardware doesnt fit my requirements, nor is it a good value for money.

sbr464 7y ago

I use bartender, it's worked great. Will check this one out also. Hard to go back to clutter after using tools like these. https://www.macbartender.com/ https://www.macbartender.com/

givinguflac 7y ago

This is great! Bartender works well but I never wanted to buy it for something so trivial. Thanks dev!

gregoriol 7y ago
Bartender is a big bit more advanced than this implementation, but it's nice to see some competition!

mshafer 7y ago

Love how you've hacked the purpose of menu bar buttons to create such a simple user interface - no separate menus or configuration, just drag things around!

jakobmi 7y ago

Tiny improvement suggestion: remove the "collapse" button and show the residual items on mouse hover of any of the top right menu bar area automatically. Save me the extra clicks. That would be exceptional user design :) Right now, it's not worth the extra 2 clicks for "a cleaner look", so I did not download

toomim 7y ago

Wow. What I always liked about MacOS was that there weren't too many menubar icons to begin with. Back in the days of Windows 98, it became typical for every application you installed to make a little icon in the "System Tray". Each app wanted to advertise itself and its (usually useless) features. The System Tray became a dustbin of crap. Eventually windows had to auto-hide them, just like you do with a dustbin. Windows also burdened users with useless notifications, for things like "Battery charged!" and "Battery at 80%", that would constantly distract you. This happened so much that PhDs in Computer Science wrote entire dissertations and approaches to use machine learning to determine the optimal time to interrupt the user with notifications, in an attempt to intelligently unburden users from this nonsense. (http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/hcii/CMU-HCII-06-100.pdf http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/hcii/CMU-HCII-06-...) OSX solved this problem by abstaining from those useless notifications and icons to begin with. They didn't provide an API for app developers to add menubar icons. So few did. But then developers wrote hacks to do so. Now there are so many that they've become a dustbin again, and we need a new app to hide them. It's Windows 98 all over again. Here's an idea -- if you are noticing useless menubar icons, get rid of them. Don't invent a new icon, that has the ability to hide other icons, and then try to come up with a UI (or machine learning system) to discern which icons need to be shown and hidden. Just get the design right in the first place. Ahh... I know I know... Steve Jobs is dead... and now the whole philosophy of getting the design right is a minority opinion. sigh

wlesieutre 7y ago
NSStatusItem has been in OS X since at least 2008 http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.24/24.07/NSStatusitem/index.html http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.24/24.07/NS... So I have a hard time seeing how you blame menu bar icons on Steve Job’s absence.

nyxtom 7y ago

Haha, I’m glad I’m not the only one who wanted this! Nice work

samat 7y ago

brew cask, anyone?

Corrado 7y ago

This looks really cool, not quite as functional as Bartender but definitely more affordable. However, I'm really looking for a way to hide app icons in the Dock and/or fast switch dialog. Things like my VPN connection or Anti-Virus program are always showing up when I Alt+tab between programs and it's annoying. Is there a simple, native way to hid those things?