Hide and organize menu bar icons on your Mac. The best free Bartender alternative — also a great Hidden Bar and Vanilla alternative — focused on stability and a smooth, distraction-free experience.
✅ Fully supports macOS 27
Note
Ice is in active development. Grab the latest build from the releases page.
Tip
✅ Fully supports macOS 27 — tested and ready for the latest macOS, all the way back to macOS 14 Sonoma.
Homebrew (recommended — updates with brew upgrade):
brew tap cavaldos/tap
brew install cavaldos/tap/iceManual: download Ice.zip from the latest release and move the unzipped app into /Applications.
For local development, see script/README.md.
Homebrew:
brew uninstall --cask cavaldos/tap/icebrew uninstall --cask --zap cavaldos/tap/iceManual: quit Ice, then drag Ice.app out of /Applications to the Trash. To also remove preferences, delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.jordanbaird.Ice.plist.
Too many menu bar icons? On small MacBook screens — especially models with the notch — the menu bar fills up fast and icons get hidden behind the camera housing.
Ice lets you hide menu bar icons on Mac, organize them into sections, and reveal them when you need them. It is a free and open-source Bartender alternative for macOS, and a drop-in replacement if you are coming from Hidden Bar, Vanilla, Dozer, or BarBee.
| Ice (this app) | Bartender 5 | Hidden Bar | Vanilla | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, open-source (GPL-3.0) | ~$16 paid | Free, open-source | Free / Pro paid |
| Hide & show menu bar icons | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Always-hidden section | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Second menu bar (Ice Bar) for notched Macs | ✅ | ✅ (Bartender Bar) | ❌ | ❌ |
| Menu bar themes (tint, border, shape) | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Hotkeys | ✅ | ✅ | Limited | Pro only |
| macOS 27 support | ✅ fully supported, tested | ✅ | ✅ |
Always-Hidden section demo — hide menu bar icons and reveal on hover
Show and hide menu bar icons demo
Fullscreen settings
| Ice Bar — second menu bar for notched MacBooks | Drag-and-drop menu bar layout |
|---|---|
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| Menu bar appearance and theme settings | Menu bar item spacing |
|---|---|
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Ice needs two grants in System Settings > Privacy & Security:
- Accessibility — hiding and moving menu bar items
- Screen Recording — menu bar item images and the Ice Bar
Important
After every update you will need to grant these again.
Releases are ad-hoc signed, so the app's designated requirement is a pinned
cdhash instead of a stable Developer ID. Each build has a different hash, so
the requirement macOS recorded when you first granted access no longer matches
the new binary. The symptom is confusing: System Settings still shows the
toggle on while Ice behaves as though it were denied.
The stale entries have to be cleared before the grant can be re-recorded:
./script/fix-permissions.shOr by hand: quit Ice, run tccutil reset Accessibility com.jordanbaird.Ice
and tccutil reset ScreenCapture com.jordanbaird.Ice, relaunch, re-grant.
Because the builds are ad-hoc signed rather than notarized, Gatekeeper may also refuse the first launch. Right-click the app and choose Open, or clear the quarantine flag with xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Ice.app.
Hide and organize menu bar icons Hide items individually or all at once, with an optional "always-hidden" section. Reveal hidden items by hovering, clicking an empty area, or scrolling — with auto-rehide, drag-and-drop reordering, and a separate Ice Bar for notched MacBooks.
Ice Bar — a second menu bar for notched Macs On MacBooks with a camera notch, icons hidden behind the notch become unreachable. The Ice Bar gives hidden icons their own full-width menu bar below, so nothing is ever lost.
Menu bar appearance and themes Custom menu bar tint (solid or gradient), shadow, border, and shape (rounded and/or split).
Hotkeys Toggle hidden sections, the Ice Bar, divider icons, and application menus from the keyboard.
Lightweight and private Launch at login, automatic updates. No account, no telemetry, no subscription — your settings stay on your Mac.
✅ macOS 27 fully supported — works on macOS 14 Sonoma and later, including Sequoia, Tahoe, and macOS 27. If you need a similar tool for macOS 13 Ventura or earlier, check out Ice 0.11.x.
Ice is built with a focus on stability, performance, and a smooth user experience.
Rather than adding features for the sake of having more features, the project prioritizes a small, focused, and reliable feature set. Every feature should have a clear purpose, integrate naturally with macOS, and maintain Ice's simplicity and performance.
Our goal is to make Ice feel fast, predictable, and unobtrusive — a tool that quietly does its job without unnecessary complexity. Ice will always remain open-source and free.
Contributions are welcome! Please read the contribution guidelines before submitting a pull request.
A fork of Ice by Jordan Baird — huge thanks for the original work this project builds on.
Is Ice free? Yes — free and open-source (GPL-3.0), no Pro tier or subscription.
Is it a good Bartender / Hidden Bar / Vanilla replacement? Yes — hide/show icons, always-hidden section, Ice Bar for the notch, hotkeys and themes, free and actively maintained.
How do I hide menu bar icons? Drag icons between Visible / Hidden / Always-Hidden in Menu Bar Layout, or right-click any icon. Hover or hotkey to reveal.
Which macOS versions are supported? macOS 14 Sonoma and later — with full, tested support for macOS 27, plus Sequoia and Tahoe. For macOS 13 or earlier, use Ice 0.11.x.
GPL-3.0 — Ice is and will always remain open-source and free.