By Cliff in Utilities — 01 Jun 2026

Keep Your Menu Bar Clutter Free With Hidden Bar Revived

Is your menu bar looking cluttered and messy? There's a solution for that. Hidden Bar Revived for MacOS will help keep your menu bar nice and tidy!

App icon for “Hidden Bar Revived” displayed on a black background. The icon consists of a light gray rounded square with a subtle glossy finish and a large pale gray circle centered inside it. Within the circle is a dark gray minimalist symbol formed by a vertical bar and a right-pointing chevron. Across the upper portion of the icon, above the circle, the words “Hidden Bar Revived” appear in an elegant black cursive script with a polished, slightly embossed look and small sparkle accents at each end of the text. The overall design is clean, modern, and monochromatic.

If you're like me, even with my short period of time of using MacOS, your menu bar is likely going to get messy and cluttered very quickly. Mine has quite a few icons for all the different apps and stuff that I use. Most of which I actually don't need to see on a regular, or even at all. This is where Hidden Bar Revived comes into play, to help you declutter your menu bar and keep it looking tidy!

What exactly is Hidden Bar Revived is the question I'm sure you're asking right now. Hidden Bar Revived is a maintained continuation of the original Hidden Bar by Dwarves Foundation, an ultra-light macOS utility that hides menu bar items to give your Mac a cleaner look.

Screenshot of the “Hidden Bar” macOS utility preferences window. A visual diagram across the top shows menu bar icons divided into three sections labeled “Always Hidden,” “Hidden,” and “Shown,” with arrows indicating where icons can be dragged. The “General” tab is selected, with settings below including options to start Hidden Bar at login, show preferences on launch, enable an always-hidden section, and automatically hide icons after five seconds. A “Set Shortcut” button appears under “Global Shortcut.”

One big thing to note here is, while Hidden Bar is no longer maintained, it is in the Apple App Store, but is's a very old version compared to what you can find via GitHub. I discovered this a few months back after originally using it and stumbling across Hidden Bar Revived, which is what I recommend you use over the original.

There are several things that I feel Hidden Bar Revived does really well. It lets you split menu-bar icons into visible and hidden sections, then reveal hidden items with a click. Setup is simple: hold ⌘ and drag icons around the menu bar, then use Hidden Bar’s arrow to collapse or expand them.

Key features include launch at login, auto-hide timers, global shortcut, full menu bar mode, Apple Silicon support, and multiple languages. It is also free, open source and the size of the app is small at about 7.4 MB, and Apple lists its privacy disclosure as Data Not Collected.

Compared to alternatives, Hidden Bar Revived is simpler than Bartender, Ice, Barbee, or iBar. MacRumors describes it as a free lightweight option with a divider, auto-hide durations, shortcuts, and full menu bar mode, while Ice adds more advanced reveal modes, hover/scroll behavior, always-hidden sections, overlap correction, and menu-bar styling.

Wide screenshot of a macOS desktop with the Vivaldi browser open. The menu bar stretches across the top of the screen and contains numerous status and application icons clustered on the right side. The desktop background shows a cityscape panorama. The image demonstrates a crowded menu bar before icons are hidden or organized.

Wide screenshot of a macOS desktop after configuring Hidden Bar. The menu bar contains a chevron-style control near the right side that separates visible icons from hidden ones. Only a smaller set of icons remains visible, creating a cleaner appearance. The desktop background and Vivaldi browser are still visible, illustrating the reduced menu bar clutter after using Hidden Bar.

With Hidden Bar Revived installed and in use, I keep my menu bar to a very minimal when it comes to what it displays. Basically it's just my Status Bar Music Player so I can see what song is playing, the weather from CARROT Weather, Sound Source related stuff, and the time/date. I have about 10 - 12 other icons hidden and out of sight unless I absolutely need them. Most of which I rarely ever need to see, so hiding them just helps keep my OCD in check!

Are you using Hidden Bar Revived or even the original version currently? Do you use an alternative and if so, what app are you using? What makes you use it over Hidden Bar Revived if I might ask? Leave some comments and let discuss it!

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Now Playing On Your Status Bar: Status Bar Music Player

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