Cornice vs MenuBarDockX

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.

MenuBarDockX is a free macOS utility that gathers menu bar icons hidden behind the notch or pushed off-screen and places them in a floating panel. Open the panel by clicking its overflow indicator or pressing Control+Option+Command+M. Tabs cover All, System, Development, Cloud, Security, and Utility; icons can be reordered manually and assigned categories. Bundled rules classify icons from Docker, JetBrains, Dropbox, 1Password, and Raycast. The project says processing is local, with no telemetry or external server, and the Swift/AppKit app has no third-party dependencies. It requires macOS 14 or later on Apple Silicon or Intel, although Intel and Sonoma have not been formally tested. Accessibility permission is required; Screen Recording may support icon images and background sampling. Builds are unsigned and unnotarized, so Gatekeeper may warn. On macOS 15 or later, right-click forwarding falls back to Toggle/Quit.