Menu Bar Toolkit
Hide Menu Bar Icons on Mac — Free
Your menu bar shouldn't look like a browser toolbar from 2006. Notchy hides the icons you don't need Bartender-style — drag to hide, tap to reveal — for free.
The proven model
A draggable separator plus a chevron toggle — the same mental model as Bartender, Ice, and Hidden Bar. ⌘-drag icons across the line to choose what hides; one tap reveals everything when you need it.
No private APIs
The hiding trick is pure public AppKit — no accessibility hacks, no screen capture, nothing for a macOS update to break or a security review to flag.
One less app to trust
Bartender's silent change of ownership spooked its users for good reason — menu bar apps see a lot. Notchy is free, does not read or upload your menu bar contents, and is built in the open by a named indie developer.
Comes with the notch
You can also hide the notch itself, replace the volume HUD, and detach Notchy tabs into menu-bar popovers — the whole top edge of your Mac, under your control.
Everything Notchy does, for free
- Fluid Dynamic Island animations on the Mac notch
- Command palette (⌃⌥K) — every action one keystroke away
- Knock — double-tap a modifier key to open the notch
- AI usage tracker (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot)
- Detach any tab into a menu-bar popover
- Now Playing music controls (Apple Music & Spotify)
- Time-synced karaoke lyrics under the notch
- Mac clipboard history shelf (password-manager safe)
- Searchable clipboard — filter by text, file name, or OCR'd words
- On-device OCR — copy a screenshot, get its text (Apple Vision)
- Window snapping — drag a window to the notch to tile it
- App Launcher — pin apps to the notch, open with one tap
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- Text snippets — TextExpander-style pastes from the ⌘K palette
- One-tap screen capture to clipboard + shelf
- Color eyedropper — sample any pixel, hex auto-copied
- System-wide mic mute for every meeting app at once
- Keystroke HUD for demos & screencasts (secure-input safe)
- Keyboard cleaning lock with countdown island (⌘⎋ unlocks)
- Menu-bar icon hiding — Bartender-style separator & chevron
- Live CPU / memory / network stats flyout
- Custom islands through the local developer API (off by default)
- iPhone-style call island — Answer/Decline FaceTime on the notch
- Notch Terminal — real VT100/xterm shell in a PTY, its own tab
- Camera Guard — alert (or block) when any app opens your camera
- Caps Lock HUD — brief island on every toggle
- Full Charge island with adjustable threshold + low-battery sound
- Alt HUD styles — edge-pinned bar or circular gauge off the notch
- Audio-reactive Now Playing visualizer (real FFT of system audio)
- Custom closed-notch idle animation — drop in your own Lottie JSON
- Drag-and-drop file drop shelf — persists across relaunches
- Zip & unzip files right from the shelf
- Image converter (HEIC, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF) + video → GIF
- Run Apple Shortcuts with one tap
- Screenshots auto-staged on the shelf, ready to drag
- Download finished alerts with Reveal in Finder
- USB drive mount island with one-tap Eject
- Apple Reminders quick capture & due list
- macOS Pomodoro notch timer & stopwatch — streaks + 7-day chart
- Resizable expanded panel (width & height, live preview)
- System HUDs (volume, brightness, battery)
- Audio output switcher (speakers, AirPods, monitor)
- AirPods connection manager & battery
- Magic Mouse, Keyboard & Trackpad battery + low-battery alerts
- Quick notes & Calendar widgets
- Camera Mirror (check your appearance)
- Keep Awake (caffeine toggle)
- Teleprompter (Cuely) for Zoom calls
- Focus-aware alerts & native haptic feedback
- Lock screen widgets & hide-the-notch mode
- 134 languages, fully localized
- Native SwiftUI, tuned for Apple silicon
Hide Menu Bar Icons — FAQ
How do I hide menu bar icons with Notchy?
Enable menu-bar hiding in Notchy’s settings. Two items appear in your menu bar: a draggable separator and a chevron toggle. ⌘-drag any icon to the hidden side of the separator, then tap the chevron to collapse or reveal them — the exact mental model Bartender and Hidden Bar use.
Is Notchy a free Bartender alternative?
For hiding and revealing icons — the job most people bought Bartender for — yes, completely free. Bartender costs $20+ and had a trust scare after a silent ownership change; Notchy is free, from a named indie developer, and does not read or upload your menu bar contents.
Does it use private APIs?
No. It’s the classic two-status-item technique: collapsing stretches the separator off-screen, pushing icons to its left out of view. Pure public AppKit — nothing that can break with a macOS security update.
How is this different from Ice or Hidden Bar?
Same proven approach, but you don’t need another app running: Notchy already lives in your notch with 40+ other tools, so icon hiding comes free with the clipboard manager, window snapping, and HUDs you’re running it for anyway.