a Bartender alternative that removes icons instead of hiding them
updated · by Anton Shakirov
Bartender tidies a full menu bar by parking icons behind a divider and handing them back on demand. hop does not do that at all — it goes at the same menu bar from the other end, by being one icon where you previously had several apps. which you need depends on what filled the bar, and this page is written to let you work that out before downloading anything.
if you want icons hidden, hop is the wrong tool and Hidden Bar is the free app that does it. this page is for the person whose menu bar is full because they installed a separate small app for every small job.
read this first: hop does not hide menu bar icons
no divider, no reveal on hover, no rules about which icon shows when. if that is what you came for, stop here — pretending otherwise would waste your afternoon.
the free app that does hide icons is Hidden Bar: open source, one divider, drag past it what you want out of the way. Ice is the other name everyone gives, and it has gone quiet — more on that below. neither costs anything, and neither is us.
which hider to reach for, what macOS itself can do without any of them, and why icons vanish behind the notch: menu bar icons hidden behind the notch
where Bartender is the better buy
Bartender does a job we do not do at all, and does it better than the free hiders do.
if the icons you have are apps you actually use
twenty icons is not automatically a problem to be solved by owning fewer apps. if those twenty are Dropbox, Slack, a VPN client, a password manager and backup software — things you opened deliberately and want running — then nothing about hop applies to you. that surplus needs parking, not removing, and parking it is what Bartender was built for.
rules, triggers and search
the free hiders give you a divider. Bartender gives you conditions: show this icon only when it changes, only when this app is in front, only on this keystroke; search the hidden set by name; lay the bar out around the notch. nobody free has matched all of it.
there is a reason this is paid work rather than a system setting. Apple gives an app a way to put one item in the menu bar and no public way to manage anybody else's — which is why tools in this category reach for accessibility and screen recording instead. that is not a red flag on its own; it is the only door there is.
the one API an app gets for its own menu bar item, and the absence of any for the rest: NSStatusItem — Apple Developer Documentation
what an app is actually asking for when it wants accessibility, and what it can do with it: why Mac apps ask for accessibility
what a Bartender alternative has to survive on macOS 26
macOS 26 reworked the architecture that draws the menu bar, and every tool reaching into it was written against how it used to behave. several spent weeks misbehaving. advice written during those weeks is still online and still describes that period as the present, so here is where each name stands now.
Bartender broke, and then it got fixed
the symptoms were icons rearranging themselves, clicks landing somewhere other than where you aimed, and the whole bar going sluggish. that was real and widely reported. it is also over: a fix chain ran through the first half of 2026 and added a layout mode that stops the constant rearranging, and the current release is 6.6.2, put out on 30 july 2026 — checked in the vendor's own update feed on 10 september 2026, not taken from a review.
one thing to carry over from that period: the fix was a new major version, not a patch. the build most people were running when macOS 26 landed does not work on it at all, and Bartender 6 needs macOS 14 or newer.
Ice went the other way
Ice is still the name everyone reaches for, and it is the recommendation most likely to send you somewhere disappointing. its last stable release is 0.11.12 from october 2024, its last commit from september 2025 — the entire macOS 26 transition happened inside that silence. a beta fixes most of it, but a beta is what it is, and the work has moved into forks. if Ice misbehaves for you today, the fix is not coming from where you are waiting for it.
Hidden Bar is the plainer tool and the one still moving: version 1.10 shipped in march 2026, after macOS 26 was out. it does one divider and nothing clever, which on a rebuilt menu bar turned out to be a feature.
release dates rather than reputation — Ice: github.com/jordanbaird/Ice, releases
and Hidden Bar, whose version landed after macOS 26 shipped: github.com/dwarvesf/hidden, releases
the breakage as it was reported at the time: macOS 26: lag and other issues with Bartender 6 — heise
the whole arc of that release, including a system switch that can block any app's menu bar item outright: what macOS 26 changed for menu bar apps
why people go looking for a Bartender alternative
in early 2024 Bartender was sold to a new owner and customers were not told. it surfaced that june when people noticed the code signing certificate had changed and went asking; the developer then explained and apologised for the silence. the app is published today by Applause Group, Inc.
for an app holding accessibility and screen recording permissions, a quiet change of who is behind it is not a small thing, and it is the actual reason this search happens as much as it does. we mention it as history, not as an argument for us: the permissions are the ones its job requires, and the current owner spent a year of engineering on the macOS 26 breakage rather than walking away.
the developer's own account of the sale and the silence around it: Bartender developer explains and apologizes for quiet acquisition — TidBITS
the other end of the same problem: fewer icons rather than hidden ones
a menu bar fills up for one of two reasons, and they need opposite treatments. either it is full of apps you use — and then it wants a hider — or it filled one small job at a time: a clipboard manager, a window snapper, a timer, a colour picker, a system monitor. eight jobs, eight icons, eight login items, eight things to update.
hop holds eighteen of those jobs behind one icon. the icons do not need hiding because they were never installed, and the login items and update checks go with them. hiding does none of that — the app is still running, still launching at login, still holding its own permissions. it is just out of sight.
so which do you need
the free route here is not macOS: beyond ⌘-dragging items around and switching individual ones off, it has no menu bar manager of its own. the free route is Hidden Bar, and it costs nothing — so the difference is not money. it is what you are left maintaining afterwards.
| what filled your menu bar | the free route | with hop |
|---|---|---|
| apps you deliberately run — Slack, Dropbox, a VPN, backup | Hidden Bar parks them behind a divider. free, and the right answer | not needed. hop replaces none of these — keep the hider |
| one small utility per small job | hidden, but still eight apps: eight login items, eight updaters | eighteen of those jobs from one icon, so there is nothing to hide |
| permissions granted app by app over a year | unchanged — hiding an icon grants and revokes nothing | asked per module, only when a tool that needs it is switched on |
| more icons than the bar fits on a notched MacBook | the surplus is parked, and comes back on a click | the surplus never existed, so the notch stops mattering |
| both at once — real apps and a pile of utilities | hides everything indiscriminately, useful and disposable alike | removes the disposable half; hide the rest with Hidden Bar |
the grid of apps that replaces one of those icons, since Launchpad is gone: app launcher
and another of the seventeen, if you recognise it as a separate icon you are running: clipboard history
what Bartender costs
checked at the source on 10 september 2026: from $12. three ways to pay — a one-time licence for Bartender 6, a yearly Pro subscription, a lifetime tier — with a four-week trial that needs no card and a fourteen-day refund. we do not quote per-tier figures: the vendor loads them with a script and they move. take $12 as the floor and check the rest before you buy.
hop is free, with no paid tier and nothing to unlock — and that is worth less here than it sounds. $12 once is not what stops anyone, and if hiding is the job you need done, Bartender being paid is no reason to pick a tool that does not do it.
using both
they are not exclusive, and on a badly crowded bar the combination beats either alone. remove the small utilities you replaced, then park what is left — the apps you actually run — behind a divider.
one of the utilities in question, in case it is the icon you would drop first: open your apps without Launchpad
and another comparison from the same row of icons, if a system monitor is one of yours: hop vs. iStat Menus
frequently asked questions
- can hop hide my menu bar icons?
- no. it has no icon-hiding feature of any kind and is not going to get one. Hidden Bar and Ice are free and do exactly that.
- then why is this page here?
- because a crowded menu bar has two causes, and one of them is having installed a separate app for every small job. that one we fix, and hiding does not.
- does Bartender work on macOS 26?
- yes. it broke badly when macOS 26 landed and was fixed over the following months; the current release is 6.6.2 from 30 july 2026 and it needs macOS 14 or newer. the older major version you may still have installed does not run on macOS 26 at all.
- is Ice still the free Bartender alternative?
- it is still the name people give, but its last stable release is from october 2024 and its last commit from september 2025, so the whole macOS 26 transition happened while it was quiet. Hidden Bar shipped a version in march 2026 and is the safer place to start.
- how many icons would hop remove?
- as many as you were running small utilities for — up to eighteen, if you had a separate app for each of the jobs it covers. it removes none of the apps you deliberately run.
- what does Bartender cost?
- from $12, checked at the source on 10 september 2026. there is a one-time licence for Bartender 6, a yearly Pro subscription and a lifetime tier, with a four-week trial that needs no card.
- can i use both?
- yes, and it is the sensible combination: fewer icons from one, the rest tucked away by the other.
the hop side of this
app launcher — the apps you open all day, one click away.
about the author
Anton Shakirovmakes hop
makes hop and every page on this site. eighteen tools under a single menu bar icon, MIT licensed and open source. reads and answers issues and email himself.