What is Ice used for?

Ice is a macOS menu bar manager written in Swift that hides, shows and rearranges menu bar items and customizes the bar's look. It is a good fit for decluttering a crowded macOS menu bar and keeping menu bar items visible on notched MacBooks.

Yes. Ice is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at jordanbaird/Ice and is written mainly in Swift.

Yes. Ice is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Yes. Ice can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Ice an alternative to?

Ice is an open-source alternative to Bartender.

Is Ice actively maintained?

The most recent commit to Ice was on 20 September 2025, and the latest release is 0.11.12, published on 29 October 2024. The project has 30k stars on GitHub.

Ice: open-source alternative to Bartender

About Ice

Ice is a menu bar management tool for macOS. Its main job is hiding and showing menu bar items, so a crowded bar can be kept tidy, and it adds a range of related features around that. The project notes that it is in active development and that some planned features are not yet implemented.

For item management, it can hide items, keep an always-hidden section, and reveal hidden items when you hover over the bar, click an empty area, or scroll or swipe. Items can rehide automatically, application menus can be hidden when they overlap, and items can be rearranged by dragging. Hidden items can appear in a separate bar, which helps on MacBooks with a notch. A search panel, hotkeys and an item-spacing option (beta) are included.

Appearance options include tint (solid or gradient), shadow, border and custom shapes such as rounded or split bars. Profiles, groups and different light and dark settings are on the roadmap. Ice is built with Swift and SwiftUI and licensed under GPL-3.0. It installs from a downloaded zip file or through Homebrew.

Key features

Hide and reveal menu bar items
Always-hidden section for rarely used items
Drag-and-drop arrangement of menu bar items
Separate bar for hidden items on notched MacBooks
Search panel and hotkeys for menu bar items
Menu bar tint, shadow, border and shapes

Good fit for

→Decluttering a crowded macOS menu bar
→Keeping menu bar items visible on notched MacBooks

Built with: Swift
Tags: macos; menu-bar; utility; swift; swiftui; status-bar; desktop-app

Ice: questions and answers

What is Ice used for?: Ice is a macOS menu bar manager written in Swift that hides, shows and rearranges menu bar items and customizes the bar's look. It is a good fit for decluttering a crowded macOS menu bar and keeping menu bar items visible on notched MacBooks.
Is Ice open source?: Yes. Ice is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at jordanbaird/Ice and is written mainly in Swift.
Is Ice free?: Yes. Ice is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Ice?: Yes. Ice can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Ice an alternative to?: Ice is an open-source alternative to Bartender.
Is Ice actively maintained?: The most recent commit to Ice was on 20 September 2025, and the latest release is 0.11.12, published on 29 October 2024. The project has 30k stars on GitHub.