Ice
A free, open-source menu bar manager for macOS that hides icons and adds a separate bar for notched MacBooks.
- Verified facts
- 4 of 4
- Alternatives ranked
- 3
- Approved reviews
- 0
- Visits sent from here
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About Ice
Ice is an open-source menu bar manager for macOS and the most common free alternative to Bartender. Its main job is hiding and showing menu bar items: you sort icons into shown, hidden and always-hidden sections by dragging, and reveal hidden ones by hovering, clicking an empty part of the menu bar, scrolling or using a hotkey. On MacBooks with a notch it can display hidden items in a separate Ice Bar below the menu bar, so nothing gets lost behind the camera housing. It also offers menu bar item search, adjustable spacing between icons, and appearance options like tints, shadows, borders and rounded or split shapes. It is free under GPL-3.0 and installs from GitHub releases or Homebrew. Ice is still under active development by a small team, and its own README says some features on its roadmap have not been implemented yet. Major macOS updates can also break it until a fix ships.
Best for: Mac users who want to hide menu bar icons for free.
Pros and cons
What works
- Free and open source
- Separate bar for items hidden by the notch
- Drag-and-drop arrangement and item search
- Menu bar styling options
Why people leave
- Some roadmap features are still unimplemented
- Smaller team than commercial rivals
- Can break after major macOS updates
Top Ice alternatives
See all 3- 1
Bartender66.5Paid, more mature menu bar manager with triggers, profiles and keyboard search.
- 2
iStat Menus52.2Combine several system monitor icons into one to save menu bar space.
- 3
Stats50.3A free system monitor that can merge its readings into fewer menu bar items.
Why people left Ice
In reviewers' own words, from reviews of the apps they moved to. These are their opinions, not ours.
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Reviews
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Ice: common questions
Is Ice free?
Yes. Ice is free, open-source software.
Is Ice open source?
Yes. The source code is on GitHub at jordanbaird/Ice.
What platforms does Ice run on?
Ice is available for macOS.
What are the best alternatives to Ice?
The highest-ranked Ice alternatives right now are Bartender, iStat Menus and Stats. See the full ranked list for pricing, platforms and verified facts.