Cornice vs Hidden Bar

Cornice is a free, open-source menu bar manager for macOS. A divider hides the menu bar items to its left, and clicking it reveals them again. An optional second divider creates a section that stays hidden even when the rest of the items are revealed. Users can adjust divider thickness and height, choose among five chevron styles, and configure keyboard shortcuts and auto-hide behavior. Cornice does not move other applications’ menu bar icons, so the divider must be positioned by hand. Optional two-finger trackpad gestures on a window title bar can resize or reposition windows, or send them to the Dock. Hiding and revealing menu bar items requires no permissions; Accessibility access is requested only when those optional gestures are enabled. The interface supports sixteen languages that can be switched without restarting. The project is distributed under GPL-3.0. It costs nothing and requires macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later on Apple Silicon. Builds are signed for development but not notarised, so macOS requires a manual first launch through its warning. After an update, gesture users must grant Accessibility permission again.

Hidden Bar is a free, open-source macOS app for hiding menu bar items. Click its arrow to expand or collapse the hidden section, and Command-drag icons across the divider to choose which items it hides. Preferences include automatic re-collapse after a selected delay and a system-wide shortcut. An optional second section stays hidden even when the main section is expanded; Option-click the arrow to reveal it. The app can launch at login through the macOS 13 or later SMAppService login item. It is available through Homebrew or manual download, and the project describes its direct download as notarized. The listed plan is free. On macOS 27, the direct download requires Accessibility permission to detect icon positions; hiding is per app, built-in macOS items remain visible, and the app must run from /Applications. That hiding feature relies on a private Apple framework that a macOS update could disrupt.