an OnlySwitch alternative
updated · by Anton Shakirov
OnlySwitch and hop are the closest things to each other on this site: both free, both MIT, both in the menu bar rather than behind a launcher hotkey, both a whole set of small things behind one icon. counting tells you little here: OnlySwitch lists about forty switches, hop has eighteen tools, and a switch and a tool are not the same unit. what differs is the kind of thing behind it.
OnlySwitch flips switches; hop runs tools. a switch turns on something your Mac already has — dark mode, hidden files, the notch. a converter, a text reader or an unpacker hands back something that did not exist before you pressed it. both are free, so take whichever matches your day — or both.
what OnlySwitch is built for
toggles, and a lot of them. hiding desktop icons, hiding the notch on a MacBook Pro, dark mode, Night Shift, True Tone, low power mode, muting the mic, autohiding the Dock and the menu bar, showing hidden files, keep-awake, emptying the trash, ejecting discs, a screen saver, AirPods, Bluetooth, radio, Spotify and Apple Music — gathered into one panel with a switch each.
it is free, MIT licensed, and actively developed: version 2.7.3 shipped in august 2026 with a sound mixer contributed by someone outside the project. nothing on this page should be read as «it is abandoned, come here instead» — it is not, and you can check that in a click.
the full switch list and the licence are in the project's own repository: jacklandrin/OnlySwitch on GitHub
and the version above is not a guess — the releases are dated: OnlySwitch releases
one switch does sit in both panels, and it is the one people install a menu bar app for first: stopping the Mac from dozing off mid-download. keep your Mac awake
where OnlySwitch is better than hop
on price and licence there is nothing between these two: both free, both MIT, neither with a paid tier or anything held back. so this is not an argument about terms — it is one about sets, and on several of them OnlySwitch wins outright.
switches you write yourself
OnlySwitch has a feature called Evolution: write a shell command or an AppleScript and it becomes a switch in the panel, next to the built-in ones. on macOS 13 and up, anything scriptable on your Mac can be given a row.
hop has no equivalent — modules can be switched off, reordered and spread across tabs, but not added. if you already keep a folder of small scripts you run by hand, that difference is the whole decision, and it goes against us.
Shortcuts and widgets
OnlySwitch ships actions for the Shortcuts app and, since Sonoma, widgets. its switches can be driven from an automation without you writing the plumbing.
hop answers hop:// links and reads commands from a file, so a script or a Shortcut built around one can start a timer, add a task with a reminder or ask what is running. that is reachable, not ready-made: you assemble it yourself, and hop has no widgets at all.
what can actually be driven that way, written out in hop's own repository rather than claimed here: hop — automation
the system toggles hop does not have
of the two dozen listed above, hop has none, and none are planned. all the system switching it does is keep-awake and one row per VPN.
the vpn rows are the exception: every tunnel your Mac already knows gets a switch, read from System Settings rather than added one vendor at a time. the vpn switcher
a switch flips a state. a tool does a job.
this is the line between the two panels, and it has nothing to do with how many rows each has. a switch has two states and no input. it turns on something macOS already holds, so its ceiling is whatever the system exposes — a shortcut to a setting you could have reached yourself.
a converter, a text reader or an unpacker has an input, options and a result. you hand it a file and get back something that did not exist before you pressed the button: a smaller mp4, a paragraph of text lifted off a screenshot, a folder that was a .rar a second ago.
but Evolution can run ffmpeg
it can, and the objection is fair. the catch is what you pay: you need the command, you need to know what codec is inside the file you are about to touch, and which flags mean «shrink it» rather than «re-encode it badly». a switch also has nowhere to drop a file and nowhere to show the result — two states give «ran» and «did not run», not a size you can check first.
so the honest trade is this: OnlySwitch stretches to almost anything if you already know the command, hop covers a fixed set of jobs without you needing to know any.
the converter is the clearest case — drag files in, see the size each one will come out at before converting, originals left alone. the file converter
which is enough: OnlySwitch or hop
by what you are actually trying to do, rather than by feature counts. the first row is the common one, and it does not go our way.
| what you want | OnlySwitch | hop |
|---|---|---|
| dark mode, hidden files and the notch, one click each | exactly what it is for | does not have any of them — install OnlySwitch |
| your menu bar is full of other apps' icons | hides them | no icon hiding, and none planned |
| a switch for something only you do | write it as a shell script, it becomes a row | modules can be reordered and switched off, not added |
| a clip that an upload form refuses | a script, if you know the command | drop it in, see the size before converting |
| text out of a screenshot or a locked pdf | — | frame the area, text lands in the clipboard |
| the file you copied twenty minutes ago | can empty the pasteboard, not recall it | history keeps files by name, paste it back as the file |
| a .rar someone sent you | — | drop it, one button, unpacks where you choose |
| price | free, MIT | free, MIT, no paid tier |
if the first two rows are your day, the answer is OnlySwitch and there is nothing further to weigh. the simple case ends where what you want stops being a state to turn on and becomes a piece of work to finish — a file to convert, text to lift, an archive to open. that is where a panel of switches runs out and this one starts.
the recogniser runs on Apple's own Vision engine, on this Mac, with nothing sent anywhere. text recognition in hop
we do not hide icons
worth saying plainly, because it is the one thing people arrive at this page looking for. hop has no icon-hiding feature and none planned.
what it does instead is remove the reason there are so many: eighteen small jobs behind one icon rather than eighteen apps with eighteen icons. if your menu bar is full of Dropbox, Slack and a backup client, that does not help and OnlySwitch or Ice will.
if the plan is to clear out the apps hop stands in for, they should go with what they left behind rather than just out of the applications folder. the app uninstaller
running both is a normal outcome
the category exists for a reason: most people end up with a clipboard manager, a window snapper, a keep-awake and a system monitor — four apps, four login items, four icons. these two are independent answers to that, and they do not conflict. if the half you want from each is different, two icons replacing eight is still a good trade.
the pairing that makes most sense: OnlySwitch for system toggles, custom script switches and icon hiding; hop for the tools that produce something — conversion, recognition, archives, the clipboard with files in it.
the clipboard is the one that keeps files, not just text: copy a file, find it by name an hour later, paste it back as the file. clipboard history in hop
getting a specific thing back out of it — including a file — is a procedure with a page of its own. find something you copied earlier
archives are the other one: zip, rar, 7z and the tar family, unpacked where you point rather than where the Mac decides. the archive manager
frequently asked questions
- can hop hide menu bar icons?
- no, and it is not planned. OnlySwitch and Ice both do that and both are free.
- which has more tools?
- OnlySwitch, if you count: about forty switches against eighteen tools. but the count is the wrong question — OnlySwitch is mostly switches for system state; hop is mostly tools that take a file and give something back.
- can i add my own switch to hop?
- no. OnlySwitch can, through Evolution, with a shell command or an AppleScript. in hop you can switch modules off, reorder them and spread them across tabs, but not add one.
- does hop work with Shortcuts?
- indirectly. hop answers hop:// links and reads commands from a file, so a Shortcut you build around one can start a timer or add a task. OnlySwitch ships ready-made Shortcuts actions and widgets; hop has neither.
- is OnlySwitch still maintained?
- yes. version 2.7.3 shipped in august 2026, with contributions from outside the project. it is not going anywhere.
- are both open source?
- yes, both under MIT, with the source of each on GitHub. there is no difference between them on price or licence.
- can i run both?
- yes, they do not conflict — and if the useful half of each is different, that is a reasonable answer rather than a compromise.
- does hop have a paid tier?
- no, none at all and none planned.
the hop side of this
vpn switcher — every vpn your Mac knows about, one switch each.
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.