14 ms·

Ice – open source menu bar manager for macOS

670 points by saikatsg 2y ago

ars 2y ago
I know some people like it, but I find the top menu bar on a mac extremely non ergonomic. The argument goes that it's an easy spot to hit: Just move your mouse to the top. But they forget that in order to use the menu bar you have to activate the app! In other OS's, if you want to pick an item from an inactive app, just click - it will activate the app, and pick the item from the menu bar at the same time. Not so with a mac. If you click on an active area of an inactive window on a mac, the click is eaten, and you have to click a second time to actually do what you are trying to do. Same with the menu bar, first you have to activate the app, then you can click a second time on the menu bar. I do not like it.
- sevg 2y ago
  100% agree. Not having those menu buttons visible until you focus means an extra click (and you can't even see what the menu headings are for that app until you click, so it also delays your thought process). Ok so you get more screen space I guess, but IMO it's not worth the trade off.
- allenbrunson 2y ago
  having one menu bar at the top of the screen made sense when macs had nine-inch screens. it saved some screen real estate, which was at a premium at the time. but the bigger the screens get, the less sense this makes. apple should have switched to menu bars in each app when they introduced mac os x. we were all forced to make so many changes at the time, one more wouldn’t have been a big deal.
- draven 2y ago
  True. On the other hand I like that the menu is on top on the screen so I can just throw the pointer up (I use a trackball) and it will end up on the menu, no precise targeting required.
- jorvi 2y ago
  People like the menu bar because of the global menu - no more hunting and pecking for a print or save option, with every application using disparate or bespoke UI kits having those aforementioned options be different places both visually, physically and logically. MacBooks are absurdly overpowered as a layman’s computer, but the global menu means they only need to learn the OS once.
  - eviks 2y ago
    How do you "learn it once" if the dev can put "print" option anywhere using UI kit?
    - piva00 2y ago
      I haven't found any apps on macOS the past 15 years where the "print" option wasn't where it's expected to be, would like an example just for the fun of it.
      - eviks 2y ago
        It doesn't matter, this is not a property of the OS or the menubar location, just an unenforced convention that you can adhere to on Windows as well
        piva00 2y ago
        Given that the convention seems more often followed on macOS can't it be a property of the environment of macOS developers usually following the conventions better than on Windows? Even if not an inherent property of the system it's an emergent one, something causes it if it's not restricted by the system itself but is still a property that apps developed for macOS are much more homogeneous in their menus UI implementation than the others.
        eviks 2y ago
        If you shroud this basic misunderstanding in so much emergent mystery, sure, but otherwise no, and the real reason is simple enough - that's just one of the defaults in some "UI kits", which macOS devs can also use, including "disparate or bespoke" ones, and could've been just as consistent without it being positioned at the single top spot
jsomedon 2y ago
I particularly like the explanation on naming it ice: > Because your menu bar becomes like ice, allowing your menu bar items to slide away
- walthamstow 2y ago
  Sounds like GPT to me
- msephton 2y ago
  It's not a great name, for discoverability reasons, but I assumed the name was playing on the relationship with Bartender.
jingsam 2y ago
Hidden Bar is good enough https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden
- TMWNN 2y ago
  I could never get Hidden Bar to work correctly. I think it's because my MacBook has a notch. iBar (free at the App Store) so far does what I need.
  - FinnKuhn 2y ago
    My MacBook Pro also has a notch and it is working fine so the notch isn't the problem
    - TMWNN 2y ago
      I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. I ran Hidden Bar for months and the hidden icons only became visible left of the notch after clicking > maybe twice, briefly, and I could never figure out what I did differently. iBar worked immediately.
      - FinnKuhn 2y ago
        Hm, I don't have enough icons for them to be left of the notch so that might be why I haven't noticed any issues ;)
  - sontek 2y ago
    You need https://apps.apple.com/us/app/say-no-to-notch/id1639306886?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/say-no-to-notch/id1639306886?m...
    - luuurker 2y ago
      That's an okay workaround, but you lose part of your screen and create a thick top bezel. As a laptop user, I want to use all available space, so what I do is to use https://topnotch.app/ https://topnotch.app/ (or a dark wallpaper) which makes the background of the bar black and until now I was using Bartender, which would display the hidden icons on a second bar under the original one when we clicked the icon. I barely noticed the notch.
arvinsim 2y ago
Glad that there are now open source options after Bartender was acquired.
kstrauser 2y ago
Not the submitter, but I installed this a couple days ago to replace Bartender. For those not following along at home, the Bartender author just sold it to some sketchy app mill. It’s an app that legitimately requires screen recording permissions to work. I trusted the old author’s reputation. I have zero trust in the own owner. Ice isn’t as good yet. It’s not nearly so configurable. For example, you can either hide all icons or none. You can’t decide to show some of them all the time. That’s a bummer. I’ll still happily accept that trade off to replace Bartender, which I’d previously purchased several versions of. It’s dead to me. Great job so far, Ice. I hope you keep improving!
- omlitt 2y ago
  It’s missing a lot, especially for a MacBook with a notch. I went with ibar until ice or any other app gets more features that bartender had. -Difficult to configure unless you don’t have a lot of apps in the top bar. -No way to scroll through the list. -Does not offer a way to show the extra icons in a bar that displays below. -No search functionality. This is something I used frequently. -Folders which were recently added to Bartender was a nice option. I do hope the developer is planning on adding more features.
- nobodywasishere 2y ago
  You can always show some icons by moving them to the right of the open/close icon
  - omlitt 2y ago
    This only works when you don’t have many icons. You can’t see ones that are hidden behind the notch. If you can, I missed this.
    - nobodywasishere 2y ago
      Ah yeah that's a good point. Don't know if this covers that use-case yet
- draugadrotten 2y ago
ninjin-carh 2y ago
I would love to try this but hesitant as I couldn't find a privacy policy. Can it be added or maybe I just couldn't find this?
- skrebbel 2y ago
  It’s open source. A privacy policy implies that the author is willing to make themselves liable to broken promises. Most OSS authors work for free and do not want to put their ass on the line like that. The license says “you figure it out”: > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. “Without warranty of any kind” also excludes any warranty wrt your privacy.
lyall 2y ago
I use Hidden Bar (https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden) for this. It works well enough despite not being updated in a while, though there is a bit of jank. Just tried out Ice and it seems to be a nice, lower jank replacement!
- emsixteen 2y ago
  I use Hidden Bar too, it's done the job for me, but if there's a reason to hop to another I'm all ears.
  - healsdata 2y ago
    It's a minor nit, but I like that Ice doesn't force me to have extra icons in the bar. Unless I missed a setting, Hidden Bar required having < and | icons for separators
  - luuurker 2y ago
    If it works, then there's no reason to change. I stopped using Bartender (because of the recent news) and noticed that Hidden Bar was last updated in Jan 2022 and Dozer in 2019. Neither have a way (or plan to have something) to handle the notch. Ice still lacks some features, but the developer is working on it and eventually it will be able to work around the notch (if you have too many icons, they'll be hidden by the notch... not sure what Apple was thinking). That's why I picked Ice.
tomphoolery 2y ago
This is awesome for folks who don't use their own custom status bar! Personally, I use SketchyBar and Yabai for window management. SketchyBar is shown almost all the time, but the status bar is set to hide unless I have my cursor at the top of my monitor. I like this because it's a good combo of having my "status bar items" all compacted on the right, with the useful information I want on the status bar at all times...such as battery level, current weather, volume, the date/time, as well as the focused window. For those who don't want to install a custom status bar, this seems like it would solve similar problems of the status bar getting way too big with all these programs running in the background.
KronisLV 2y ago
I got a MacBook for a freelance development project (also needed to build an iOS app) and I have to say that the OS itself feels pretty good. Very much a walled garden and normally perhaps outside of my budget (and the button order on the keyboard feels odd), but in general it's pretty smooth so far! Nice to see various customization options, BetterDisplay was also pretty useful when dealing with an external monitor (sadly I never figured out why there's no proper anti-aliasing on the external monitor).
- mastercheif 2y ago
  Apple removed sub-pixel text rendering support in macOS 3-4 years ago. They wanted to merge their GPU driver stack across iOS and macOS when they moved to Apple Silicon. This has come with some benefits, like the lightning fast speed that Macs can enable external monitors.
- nottorp 2y ago
  You're saying about what I said when I first got paid to do some mac software :) I bought a crappy used mac, used it to make the money, then thought it was immoral to not get a new laptop (it wasn't a big project but it paid like 3x the laptop, and i was moonlighting it so it was all bonus money). 15 years later i have more macs than x86 boxes in my home office...
  - KronisLV 2y ago
    I have to say that personally I like the ThinkPad keyboards a bit more and I still have a sweet spot for various Linux distros, but for what it's worth, my experience with the MacBook has been pretty darn good so far!
anileated 2y ago
I am not the target audience for macOS menu bar managers like Ice. You can drag-reorder icons in pure macOS without any third-party software, and the additional options seem unnecessary.
- omnimus 2y ago
  Why would anyone write comment like this? Like does it add anything to the discussion? Who cares that you dont use menubar apps so you dont need Bartender.
  - freehorse 2y ago
    Because some people may just need this so it is good for them to know, in conjunction to this https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/16lpfg5/hidden_preference_to_alter_the_menubar_spacing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/16lpfg5/hidden_prefe... > to change the spacing in the menubar and I found out it changes two preferences: ``` defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int X defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int Y ``` > which can be reverted with ``` defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding ``` I learnt about these in a similar topic here. I do not need anything more from a bar app really, so I do not need to install an additional app for sth that I can just handle through a couple of preferences changes in the terminal. For people who do need more functionality, they can get one of these tools.
  - anileated 2y ago
    I opened the README and Usage section only showed how to reorder items, nothing else. This app is utterly unnecessary for that purpose. I thought, perhaps other macOS users are unaware of that, and my comment would help.
    - msephton 2y ago
      It shows how to reorder them into groups that are hidden temporarily and/or permanently. Very useful to keep a clutter free and optimised workspace.
mulhoon 2y ago
Seems like one of those apps ripe for Sherlocking by Apple. Which would also solve screen recording privacy issues.
- egypturnash 2y ago
  Apple's sort of already sherlocked this. The "Control Center" that consolidates a bunch of menu bar widgets into one big iOS-style dropdown full of controls solves the same problem of "I have more crap in my menu bar than I have room for, especially now that my laptop has this stupid notch". Except it's a private interface so absolutely zero of the programs that want to put stuff in your menu bar can offer up buttons in there.
xlii 2y ago
Offtopic, but am I the only person surprised how badly Apple stalled when it comes to window management and UX on MacOS? I feel that today, as a power user/professional, MacOS wouldn't be usable without applications like Bartender, external window manager such as Rectangle/Divvy etc. I feel strong attraction coming from yabai, but disabling SIP is too much for me. Personally I'm reaching the point where I'd migrate to Linux ONLY for the user experience (I live in Emacs most of the time anyway, and there I could get some minimal WM on top of it, I guess).
- creesch 2y ago
  I totally agree. But it also seems like a lot of people don't. Frustratingly enough when discussions like that come up a lot of people respond with a "MacOS just works differently, you just need to get used to it" discussion killer. Yeah, I know some design principles are different. That doesn't always mean they are better or couldn't be better. In general I feel like UI/UX on MacOS for the most part has stagnated in the past decade or so. Where there has been evolution, it mostly has been things (poorly) ported over from iOS (system preferences for example). This in contrast to other desktop platforms that have kept evolving and experimenting with other ways of working. Granted, not always improving things but often making things much better. Window management on windows 11 for example is just plain awesome imho. Certainly on wider screens or screens in portrait it is extremely powerful. Everything I am working on MacOS I feel very limited in that area. Even with tools like Rectangle it still doesn't work as fluid as it does on windows.
  - the_other 2y ago
    > But it also seems like a lot of people don't. n=1... I'm one who doesn't care. I didn't like to have a lot of system tray icons when I used Windows, and I don't like having a lot of them in macOS. I turn off the ones I rarely use (when I can). However, I also feel Apple have reduced the usability of the menu bar icons in recent iterations. Their clickable area/spacing has enlarged, which is counter to having small icons in a focused space. The Clock and Control Centre can't be moved around. I didn't use Control Centre at all until I discovered some setting that can only be toggled. Since I toggled it, I've forgotten what it was and haven't touched Control Centre since. I'd turn it off if I could. Maybe I need Bartender after all.
kasutaja2 2y ago
If you just want to make all icons visible then the easiest way is probably to adjust "defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int <value>" and "defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int <value>". Needs restart/logout to apply. Personally I set both to 6. Works well if you have a static number of icons.
benreesman 2y ago
This observation is tangential at best, so don’t upvote it. But HN remains simply unparalleled in finding cool software that makes computers more fun day in, day out. My internal jury is out on whether chatbots ranked through an elaborate mechanism (Instruct) via what amounts to what I wish I had never built on P(click) feed ranking. But the Rust Terminal Renaissance? Nix? Flox? TailScale? Linear and Graphite and the golang community with things like fzf? That shit makes my life better and more fun daily. And HN is where to hear about it first short of being really, really good at GitHub.
Vilkku 2y ago
My biggest need for managing the icons in the menu bar is to prevent them from getting lost behind the notch on my 14" MBP. I recently discovered this question on StackExchange on how to change the icon spacing and padding and that has kinda resolved the situation, but it doesn't look visually as good. https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/465674 https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/465674 Perhaps the padding and spacing adjustment could also be brought to Ice? I'm happy to see that alternatives to Bartender exist! I guess this is not the most straightforward thing to do, as there seem to be many apps for this, but most are no longer in development. As an aside, there are options in macOS to move some icons like bluetooth and wifi to the control center away from the status bar, but for some reason they always seem to come back.
- croemer 2y ago
  Yep that's what I do as well,animal spacing override.
- luuurker 2y ago
  That's on the roadmap: https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/67 https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/67 The dev is also working on a second bar (like Bartender has) that should fix the problem for macs with notches: https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/1 https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/1
geniium 2y ago
That looks very promising. Thanks for doing this.
saghul 2y ago
Interesting! Is there a way to center the content of the bar on the screen? The split is very cumbersome to use on an ultrawide display and I'd be happy if there was a way to put the content on the middle 3rd.
- hbn 2y ago
  If it did it would have to be only for external displays because the laptops all have a notch there
residualmind 2y ago
Aw, I thought it was for managing a bar. Supplies, shifts, etc..
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Haha I thought the same.
lycopodiopsida 2y ago
I was also tilted by the Bartender debacle and removed it. Tried HiddenBar, but then I realized that a lot of apps running in background offer a possibility to hide the tray icon (it is of no use anyway) and after some clean up in the Control Center it is fine as it is. YMMV, of course and it still would be better if Apple sherlocks it. Such small QoL changes should be a no-brainer.
gregoriol 2y ago
I still use the old Bartender 4, works perfectly on macOS 14.5 even with a notch If this tool gets the additional bar feature and some more customisations, it might be a good alternative
Angostura 2y ago
The Usage section hopefully rather under-sells it: 'Simply Command + drag your menu bar items to rearrange them.' ... err yes, that's how MacOS works without add-ons
- russelg 2y ago
  Judging by the last thread about Bartender, when people were discussing alternatives, some people did not even know that was how you can rearrange your menu icons. So I can see why it's worth mentioning. Also worth mentioning that this behaviour is completely undiscoverable, just like most power user interactions on macOS.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
saltserv 2y ago
[dead]
DavideNL 2y ago
Fyi regarding Bartender; You could just use "Little Snitch", block internet for Bartender, and keep using the latest safe version for a while: v5.0.49. Restore it from a backup if you can, and disable updates. Also, here’s the “v5.0.49” file hash: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/0ce40bb5d6f0605c91ae2dc605d8cb7c534823ae5024cbc042ef417b8013071d/details https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/0ce40bb5d6f0605c91ae2dc6...
- zukzuk 2y ago
  Or LuLu if you want a free, open alternative to Little Snitch.
xmdx 2y ago
I had to install one of these tools recently because of the notch on newer macbooks, they hide icons that overflow and you never notice it. For a while I thought my apps were erroring and not opening properly. You have to manage it yourself with one of these tools otherwise they are lost to the void in my experience.
memset 2y ago
Also xbar: https://github.com/matryer/xbar https://github.com/matryer/xbar
- msephton 2y ago
  This adds more icons, rather than allowing you to manage the existing ones.
drcongo 2y ago
I switched to this yesterday and much prefer it already. Bartender 5 was extremely flaky for me, this just does what it's supposed to.
benyafai 2y ago
If anyone is looking for alternatives, I've been using Vanilla for a while and have ben happy with it. https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/ https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/
- robotmachine 2y ago
  Seconded.
- luuurker 2y ago
  Seems to be a nice option, but the way it handles the notch... I think the second bar that Bartender has and Ice will eventually have[0] works better. For now, I'll support Ice because it's open source. I'll donate more than the $10 Vanilla Pro costs just to have an open source alternative. It's nice to have alternatives though. [0] https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/1 https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/1
frob 2y ago
For about 4 years now, I've used Dozer [0] to hide and organize menu items. It's been mature and stable the whole time. It had many of the features still on the development roadmap for Ice. You can drag-and-drop icons, hide and reveal with clicks or keyboards, and have two levels of hidability. [0] https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer
- BChass 2y ago
  Same here. Only if the original author didn't abandoned the project.
  - yig 2y ago
    There is an Apple Silicon build under Releases. It's work fine. It doesn't ask for extra permissions.
deagle50 2y ago
Can this shrink the gap between icons like bartender?
- msephton 2y ago
  Not currently, but you can do that using a Terminal command. Search all replies here for it
  - deagle50 2y ago
    Thanks!
carimura 2y ago
I know this thread is on Ice, but for all the alternatives in the original Reddit post -- see https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1d7zjv8/comment/l7d99za/ https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1d7zjv8/comment/l7... You can keep bartender on 5.0.49 as well.
bdcravens 2y ago
I see many people mentioning other alternatives to Bartender as well, so I'll point out again that if you already have a subscription to Parallels, their companion toolbox app (a suite of utilities) includes a similar app
foxandmouse 2y ago
It is just me or has this been happening more and more with mac apps. The unarchiver, Transmition, uTorrent..
- rovr138 2y ago
  >more and more It's been like 18 years since uTorrent... and that was Windows only, unless I'm crazy.
- monocularvision 2y ago
  Do you mean Transmission the open source BitTorrent app for macOS? What’s the problem with it?
  - foxandmouse 2y ago
    The official website was compromised and tainted .dmg files were uploaded to the site, using an Apple Developer signature to bypass the OS X gatekeeper feature The tainted packages installed a ransomware application (a variant of Linux.Encoder.1, but recompiled for Mac, known as KeRanger) that encrypts the user's files and attempts to force users to pay.. The developers were not complicit in the hack that affected their software; but I included it because the point I was trying to make was that hackers are aware and targeting apps popular among developers.
jprd 2y ago
It took me a seriously long amount of time to realize this wasn't software for MANAGING AN ACTUAL BAR/PUB. Must be frustrating as a Mac user to be locked into paying lots of money to have a desktop OS that works how you want
- hbn 2y ago
  It turns out Safari isn't for backpacking expeditions in Tanzania either
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kstrauser 2y ago
  This is an article about a free, open source tool. Running FOSS tools to tweak my desktop isn't frustrating.
gherkinnn 2y ago
Having learned that Bartender sold out, I uninstalled it and replaced it with.. nothing. It turns out that macOS has introduced minimal adjustability some time in the past without me knowing.
alpb 2y ago
It should be a crime that Apple hasn't seen the popularity of tools like Bartender, which is major privacy violation to begin with, and developed their own feature for this.
dwich 2y ago
For those like myself who used Bartender as a way to get an extra menu bar for their offscreen items on small / notch screens (something Ice doesn't have yet), I'm writing up the alternatives as I try them out: https://procrastopossum.com/bartender-alternatives/ https://procrastopossum.com/bartender-alternatives/ So far I'm just hoping the BetterTouchTool option pans out.

670 points by saikatsg 2y ago

ars 2y ago

I know some people like it, but I find the top menu bar on a mac extremely non ergonomic. The argument goes that it's an easy spot to hit: Just move your mouse to the top. But they forget that in order to use the menu bar you have to activate the app! In other OS's, if you want to pick an item from an inactive app, just click - it will activate the app, and pick the item from the menu bar at the same time. Not so with a mac. If you click on an active area of an inactive window on a mac, the click is eaten, and you have to click a second time to actually do what you are trying to do. Same with the menu bar, first you have to activate the app, then you can click a second time on the menu bar. I do not like it.

sevg 2y ago
100% agree. Not having those menu buttons visible until you focus means an extra click (and you can't even see what the menu headings are for that app until you click, so it also delays your thought process). Ok so you get more screen space I guess, but IMO it's not worth the trade off.
allenbrunson 2y ago
having one menu bar at the top of the screen made sense when macs had nine-inch screens. it saved some screen real estate, which was at a premium at the time. but the bigger the screens get, the less sense this makes. apple should have switched to menu bars in each app when they introduced mac os x. we were all forced to make so many changes at the time, one more wouldn’t have been a big deal.
draven 2y ago
True. On the other hand I like that the menu is on top on the screen so I can just throw the pointer up (I use a trackball) and it will end up on the menu, no precise targeting required.
jorvi 2y ago
People like the menu bar because of the global menu - no more hunting and pecking for a print or save option, with every application using disparate or bespoke UI kits having those aforementioned options be different places both visually, physically and logically. MacBooks are absurdly overpowered as a layman’s computer, but the global menu means they only need to learn the OS once.
- eviks 2y ago
  How do you "learn it once" if the dev can put "print" option anywhere using UI kit?
  - piva00 2y ago
    I haven't found any apps on macOS the past 15 years where the "print" option wasn't where it's expected to be, would like an example just for the fun of it.
    - eviks 2y ago
      It doesn't matter, this is not a property of the OS or the menubar location, just an unenforced convention that you can adhere to on Windows as well
      - piva00 2y ago
        Given that the convention seems more often followed on macOS can't it be a property of the environment of macOS developers usually following the conventions better than on Windows? Even if not an inherent property of the system it's an emergent one, something causes it if it's not restricted by the system itself but is still a property that apps developed for macOS are much more homogeneous in their menus UI implementation than the others.
        eviks 2y ago
        If you shroud this basic misunderstanding in so much emergent mystery, sure, but otherwise no, and the real reason is simple enough - that's just one of the defaults in some "UI kits", which macOS devs can also use, including "disparate or bespoke" ones, and could've been just as consistent without it being positioned at the single top spot

jsomedon 2y ago

I particularly like the explanation on naming it ice: > Because your menu bar becomes like ice, allowing your menu bar items to slide away

walthamstow 2y ago
Sounds like GPT to me
msephton 2y ago
It's not a great name, for discoverability reasons, but I assumed the name was playing on the relationship with Bartender.

jingsam 2y ago

Hidden Bar is good enough https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden

TMWNN 2y ago
I could never get Hidden Bar to work correctly. I think it's because my MacBook has a notch. iBar (free at the App Store) so far does what I need.
- FinnKuhn 2y ago
  My MacBook Pro also has a notch and it is working fine so the notch isn't the problem
  - TMWNN 2y ago
    I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. I ran Hidden Bar for months and the hidden icons only became visible left of the notch after clicking > maybe twice, briefly, and I could never figure out what I did differently. iBar worked immediately.
    - FinnKuhn 2y ago
      Hm, I don't have enough icons for them to be left of the notch so that might be why I haven't noticed any issues ;)
- sontek 2y ago
  You need https://apps.apple.com/us/app/say-no-to-notch/id1639306886?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/say-no-to-notch/id1639306886?m...
  - luuurker 2y ago
    That's an okay workaround, but you lose part of your screen and create a thick top bezel. As a laptop user, I want to use all available space, so what I do is to use https://topnotch.app/ https://topnotch.app/ (or a dark wallpaper) which makes the background of the bar black and until now I was using Bartender, which would display the hidden icons on a second bar under the original one when we clicked the icon. I barely noticed the notch.

arvinsim 2y ago

Glad that there are now open source options after Bartender was acquired.

kstrauser 2y ago

Not the submitter, but I installed this a couple days ago to replace Bartender. For those not following along at home, the Bartender author just sold it to some sketchy app mill. It’s an app that legitimately requires screen recording permissions to work. I trusted the old author’s reputation. I have zero trust in the own owner. Ice isn’t as good yet. It’s not nearly so configurable. For example, you can either hide all icons or none. You can’t decide to show some of them all the time. That’s a bummer. I’ll still happily accept that trade off to replace Bartender, which I’d previously purchased several versions of. It’s dead to me. Great job so far, Ice. I hope you keep improving!

omlitt 2y ago
It’s missing a lot, especially for a MacBook with a notch. I went with ibar until ice or any other app gets more features that bartender had. -Difficult to configure unless you don’t have a lot of apps in the top bar. -No way to scroll through the list. -Does not offer a way to show the extra icons in a bar that displays below. -No search functionality. This is something I used frequently. -Folders which were recently added to Bartender was a nice option. I do hope the developer is planning on adding more features.
nobodywasishere 2y ago
You can always show some icons by moving them to the right of the open/close icon
- omlitt 2y ago
  This only works when you don’t have many icons. You can’t see ones that are hidden behind the notch. If you can, I missed this.
  - nobodywasishere 2y ago
    Ah yeah that's a good point. Don't know if this covers that use-case yet
draugadrotten 2y ago

ninjin-carh 2y ago

I would love to try this but hesitant as I couldn't find a privacy policy. Can it be added or maybe I just couldn't find this?

skrebbel 2y ago
It’s open source. A privacy policy implies that the author is willing to make themselves liable to broken promises. Most OSS authors work for free and do not want to put their ass on the line like that. The license says “you figure it out”: > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. “Without warranty of any kind” also excludes any warranty wrt your privacy.

lyall 2y ago

I use Hidden Bar (https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden) for this. It works well enough despite not being updated in a while, though there is a bit of jank. Just tried out Ice and it seems to be a nice, lower jank replacement!

emsixteen 2y ago
I use Hidden Bar too, it's done the job for me, but if there's a reason to hop to another I'm all ears.
- healsdata 2y ago
  It's a minor nit, but I like that Ice doesn't force me to have extra icons in the bar. Unless I missed a setting, Hidden Bar required having < and | icons for separators
- luuurker 2y ago
  If it works, then there's no reason to change. I stopped using Bartender (because of the recent news) and noticed that Hidden Bar was last updated in Jan 2022 and Dozer in 2019. Neither have a way (or plan to have something) to handle the notch. Ice still lacks some features, but the developer is working on it and eventually it will be able to work around the notch (if you have too many icons, they'll be hidden by the notch... not sure what Apple was thinking). That's why I picked Ice.

tomphoolery 2y ago

This is awesome for folks who don't use their own custom status bar! Personally, I use SketchyBar and Yabai for window management. SketchyBar is shown almost all the time, but the status bar is set to hide unless I have my cursor at the top of my monitor. I like this because it's a good combo of having my "status bar items" all compacted on the right, with the useful information I want on the status bar at all times...such as battery level, current weather, volume, the date/time, as well as the focused window. For those who don't want to install a custom status bar, this seems like it would solve similar problems of the status bar getting way too big with all these programs running in the background.

KronisLV 2y ago

I got a MacBook for a freelance development project (also needed to build an iOS app) and I have to say that the OS itself feels pretty good. Very much a walled garden and normally perhaps outside of my budget (and the button order on the keyboard feels odd), but in general it's pretty smooth so far! Nice to see various customization options, BetterDisplay was also pretty useful when dealing with an external monitor (sadly I never figured out why there's no proper anti-aliasing on the external monitor).

mastercheif 2y ago
Apple removed sub-pixel text rendering support in macOS 3-4 years ago. They wanted to merge their GPU driver stack across iOS and macOS when they moved to Apple Silicon. This has come with some benefits, like the lightning fast speed that Macs can enable external monitors.
nottorp 2y ago
You're saying about what I said when I first got paid to do some mac software :) I bought a crappy used mac, used it to make the money, then thought it was immoral to not get a new laptop (it wasn't a big project but it paid like 3x the laptop, and i was moonlighting it so it was all bonus money). 15 years later i have more macs than x86 boxes in my home office...
- KronisLV 2y ago
  I have to say that personally I like the ThinkPad keyboards a bit more and I still have a sweet spot for various Linux distros, but for what it's worth, my experience with the MacBook has been pretty darn good so far!

anileated 2y ago

I am not the target audience for macOS menu bar managers like Ice. You can drag-reorder icons in pure macOS without any third-party software, and the additional options seem unnecessary.

omnimus 2y ago
Why would anyone write comment like this? Like does it add anything to the discussion? Who cares that you dont use menubar apps so you dont need Bartender.
- freehorse 2y ago
  Because some people may just need this so it is good for them to know, in conjunction to this https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/16lpfg5/hidden_preference_to_alter_the_menubar_spacing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/16lpfg5/hidden_prefe... > to change the spacing in the menubar and I found out it changes two preferences: ``` defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int X defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int Y ``` > which can be reverted with ``` defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding ``` I learnt about these in a similar topic here. I do not need anything more from a bar app really, so I do not need to install an additional app for sth that I can just handle through a couple of preferences changes in the terminal. For people who do need more functionality, they can get one of these tools.
- anileated 2y ago
  I opened the README and Usage section only showed how to reorder items, nothing else. This app is utterly unnecessary for that purpose. I thought, perhaps other macOS users are unaware of that, and my comment would help.
  - msephton 2y ago
    It shows how to reorder them into groups that are hidden temporarily and/or permanently. Very useful to keep a clutter free and optimised workspace.

mulhoon 2y ago

Seems like one of those apps ripe for Sherlocking by Apple. Which would also solve screen recording privacy issues.

egypturnash 2y ago
Apple's sort of already sherlocked this. The "Control Center" that consolidates a bunch of menu bar widgets into one big iOS-style dropdown full of controls solves the same problem of "I have more crap in my menu bar than I have room for, especially now that my laptop has this stupid notch". Except it's a private interface so absolutely zero of the programs that want to put stuff in your menu bar can offer up buttons in there.

xlii 2y ago

Offtopic, but am I the only person surprised how badly Apple stalled when it comes to window management and UX on MacOS? I feel that today, as a power user/professional, MacOS wouldn't be usable without applications like Bartender, external window manager such as Rectangle/Divvy etc. I feel strong attraction coming from yabai, but disabling SIP is too much for me. Personally I'm reaching the point where I'd migrate to Linux ONLY for the user experience (I live in Emacs most of the time anyway, and there I could get some minimal WM on top of it, I guess).

creesch 2y ago
I totally agree. But it also seems like a lot of people don't. Frustratingly enough when discussions like that come up a lot of people respond with a "MacOS just works differently, you just need to get used to it" discussion killer. Yeah, I know some design principles are different. That doesn't always mean they are better or couldn't be better. In general I feel like UI/UX on MacOS for the most part has stagnated in the past decade or so. Where there has been evolution, it mostly has been things (poorly) ported over from iOS (system preferences for example). This in contrast to other desktop platforms that have kept evolving and experimenting with other ways of working. Granted, not always improving things but often making things much better. Window management on windows 11 for example is just plain awesome imho. Certainly on wider screens or screens in portrait it is extremely powerful. Everything I am working on MacOS I feel very limited in that area. Even with tools like Rectangle it still doesn't work as fluid as it does on windows.
- the_other 2y ago
  > But it also seems like a lot of people don't. n=1... I'm one who doesn't care. I didn't like to have a lot of system tray icons when I used Windows, and I don't like having a lot of them in macOS. I turn off the ones I rarely use (when I can). However, I also feel Apple have reduced the usability of the menu bar icons in recent iterations. Their clickable area/spacing has enlarged, which is counter to having small icons in a focused space. The Clock and Control Centre can't be moved around. I didn't use Control Centre at all until I discovered some setting that can only be toggled. Since I toggled it, I've forgotten what it was and haven't touched Control Centre since. I'd turn it off if I could. Maybe I need Bartender after all.

kasutaja2 2y ago

If you just want to make all icons visible then the easiest way is probably to adjust "defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int <value>" and "defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int <value>". Needs restart/logout to apply. Personally I set both to 6. Works well if you have a static number of icons.

benreesman 2y ago

This observation is tangential at best, so don’t upvote it. But HN remains simply unparalleled in finding cool software that makes computers more fun day in, day out. My internal jury is out on whether chatbots ranked through an elaborate mechanism (Instruct) via what amounts to what I wish I had never built on P(click) feed ranking. But the Rust Terminal Renaissance? Nix? Flox? TailScale? Linear and Graphite and the golang community with things like fzf? That shit makes my life better and more fun daily. And HN is where to hear about it first short of being really, really good at GitHub.

Vilkku 2y ago

My biggest need for managing the icons in the menu bar is to prevent them from getting lost behind the notch on my 14" MBP. I recently discovered this question on StackExchange on how to change the icon spacing and padding and that has kinda resolved the situation, but it doesn't look visually as good. https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/465674 https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/465674 Perhaps the padding and spacing adjustment could also be brought to Ice? I'm happy to see that alternatives to Bartender exist! I guess this is not the most straightforward thing to do, as there seem to be many apps for this, but most are no longer in development. As an aside, there are options in macOS to move some icons like bluetooth and wifi to the control center away from the status bar, but for some reason they always seem to come back.

croemer 2y ago
Yep that's what I do as well,animal spacing override.
luuurker 2y ago
That's on the roadmap: https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/67 https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/67 The dev is also working on a second bar (like Bartender has) that should fix the problem for macs with notches: https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/1 https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/1

geniium 2y ago

That looks very promising. Thanks for doing this.

saghul 2y ago

Interesting! Is there a way to center the content of the bar on the screen? The split is very cumbersome to use on an ultrawide display and I'd be happy if there was a way to put the content on the middle 3rd.

hbn 2y ago
If it did it would have to be only for external displays because the laptops all have a notch there

residualmind 2y ago

Aw, I thought it was for managing a bar. Supplies, shifts, etc..

SoftTalker 2y ago
Haha I thought the same.

lycopodiopsida 2y ago

I was also tilted by the Bartender debacle and removed it. Tried HiddenBar, but then I realized that a lot of apps running in background offer a possibility to hide the tray icon (it is of no use anyway) and after some clean up in the Control Center it is fine as it is. YMMV, of course and it still would be better if Apple sherlocks it. Such small QoL changes should be a no-brainer.

gregoriol 2y ago

I still use the old Bartender 4, works perfectly on macOS 14.5 even with a notch If this tool gets the additional bar feature and some more customisations, it might be a good alternative

Angostura 2y ago

The Usage section hopefully rather under-sells it: 'Simply Command + drag your menu bar items to rearrange them.' ... err yes, that's how MacOS works without add-ons

russelg 2y ago
Judging by the last thread about Bartender, when people were discussing alternatives, some people did not even know that was how you can rearrange your menu icons. So I can see why it's worth mentioning. Also worth mentioning that this behaviour is completely undiscoverable, just like most power user interactions on macOS.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

saltserv 2y ago

[dead]

DavideNL 2y ago

Fyi regarding Bartender; You could just use "Little Snitch", block internet for Bartender, and keep using the latest safe version for a while: v5.0.49. Restore it from a backup if you can, and disable updates. Also, here’s the “v5.0.49” file hash: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/0ce40bb5d6f0605c91ae2dc605d8cb7c534823ae5024cbc042ef417b8013071d/details https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/0ce40bb5d6f0605c91ae2dc6...

zukzuk 2y ago
Or LuLu if you want a free, open alternative to Little Snitch.

xmdx 2y ago

I had to install one of these tools recently because of the notch on newer macbooks, they hide icons that overflow and you never notice it. For a while I thought my apps were erroring and not opening properly. You have to manage it yourself with one of these tools otherwise they are lost to the void in my experience.

memset 2y ago

Also xbar: https://github.com/matryer/xbar https://github.com/matryer/xbar

msephton 2y ago
This adds more icons, rather than allowing you to manage the existing ones.

drcongo 2y ago

I switched to this yesterday and much prefer it already. Bartender 5 was extremely flaky for me, this just does what it's supposed to.

benyafai 2y ago

If anyone is looking for alternatives, I've been using Vanilla for a while and have ben happy with it. https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/ https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/

robotmachine 2y ago
Seconded.
luuurker 2y ago
Seems to be a nice option, but the way it handles the notch... I think the second bar that Bartender has and Ice will eventually have[0] works better. For now, I'll support Ice because it's open source. I'll donate more than the $10 Vanilla Pro costs just to have an open source alternative. It's nice to have alternatives though. [0] https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/1 https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/1

frob 2y ago

For about 4 years now, I've used Dozer [0] to hide and organize menu items. It's been mature and stable the whole time. It had many of the features still on the development roadmap for Ice. You can drag-and-drop icons, hide and reveal with clicks or keyboards, and have two levels of hidability. [0] https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer

BChass 2y ago
Same here. Only if the original author didn't abandoned the project.
- yig 2y ago
  There is an Apple Silicon build under Releases. It's work fine. It doesn't ask for extra permissions.

deagle50 2y ago

Can this shrink the gap between icons like bartender?

msephton 2y ago
Not currently, but you can do that using a Terminal command. Search all replies here for it
- deagle50 2y ago
  Thanks!

carimura 2y ago

I know this thread is on Ice, but for all the alternatives in the original Reddit post -- see https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1d7zjv8/comment/l7d99za/ https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1d7zjv8/comment/l7... You can keep bartender on 5.0.49 as well.

bdcravens 2y ago

I see many people mentioning other alternatives to Bartender as well, so I'll point out again that if you already have a subscription to Parallels, their companion toolbox app (a suite of utilities) includes a similar app

foxandmouse 2y ago

It is just me or has this been happening more and more with mac apps. The unarchiver, Transmition, uTorrent..

rovr138 2y ago
>more and more It's been like 18 years since uTorrent... and that was Windows only, unless I'm crazy.
monocularvision 2y ago
Do you mean Transmission the open source BitTorrent app for macOS? What’s the problem with it?
- foxandmouse 2y ago
  The official website was compromised and tainted .dmg files were uploaded to the site, using an Apple Developer signature to bypass the OS X gatekeeper feature The tainted packages installed a ransomware application (a variant of Linux.Encoder.1, but recompiled for Mac, known as KeRanger) that encrypts the user's files and attempts to force users to pay.. The developers were not complicit in the hack that affected their software; but I included it because the point I was trying to make was that hackers are aware and targeting apps popular among developers.

jprd 2y ago

It took me a seriously long amount of time to realize this wasn't software for MANAGING AN ACTUAL BAR/PUB. Must be frustrating as a Mac user to be locked into paying lots of money to have a desktop OS that works how you want

hbn 2y ago
It turns out Safari isn't for backpacking expeditions in Tanzania either
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kstrauser 2y ago
This is an article about a free, open source tool. Running FOSS tools to tweak my desktop isn't frustrating.

gherkinnn 2y ago

Having learned that Bartender sold out, I uninstalled it and replaced it with.. nothing. It turns out that macOS has introduced minimal adjustability some time in the past without me knowing.

alpb 2y ago

It should be a crime that Apple hasn't seen the popularity of tools like Bartender, which is major privacy violation to begin with, and developed their own feature for this.

dwich 2y ago

For those like myself who used Bartender as a way to get an extra menu bar for their offscreen items on small / notch screens (something Ice doesn't have yet), I'm writing up the alternatives as I try them out: https://procrastopossum.com/bartender-alternatives/ https://procrastopossum.com/bartender-alternatives/ So far I'm just hoping the BetterTouchTool option pans out.