Cornice vs Thaw

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.

Thaw is a free, open-source macOS utility for hiding, revealing, and arranging menu bar items. Users can save arrangements as profiles linked to a display, Space, or Focus filter. Conditions such as battery level, Wi-Fi network, active Focus, or a script result can trigger items to appear or disappear. Appearance options include tint, gradients, shadows, borders, custom shapes, and light and dark mode settings.

Thaw requires macOS 26 or later and supports macOS 26 and 27. It includes a Raycast extension and thaw:// deep links for tools such as Alfred, Shortcuts, Keyboard Maestro, and BetterTouchTool. The project says the app requires no account and has no tracking, analytics, or telemetry. Accessibility permission is requested on first launch; Screen Recording is optional for live previews and wallpaper-derived tinting. It is licensed under GPL-3.0 and can be installed with Homebrew or as a DMG from the latest GitHub release. Only the latest stable release receives security fixes.