Dozer vs SwiftBar

Dozer is a free, open-source macOS utility for hiding menu bar icons and keeping the status area less crowded. A left click toggles one icon group, while option-left-click controls an optional second group. Dozer can hide status bar icons automatically, including when it launches. Its documented No Icon mode uses a keyboard shortcut to hide and show icons without clicking the menu bar. Users can set the delay before icons disappear and adjust icon size and padding. Right-clicking opens settings. The README provides Homebrew Cask and manual installation instructions, and lists macOS 10.13 or later as the requirement. The repository uses the Mozilla Public License 2.0. Dozer supports hiding, rearranging and grouping menu items, plus keyboard shortcuts, but does not provide custom menu items. Bug reports and feature requests go through GitHub issues, with the app version requested in bug reports.

SwiftBar displays the output of custom scripts in the macOS menu bar and turns it into interactive menus. Plugins can be written in Bash, Python, Ruby, Swift, or JavaScript; SwiftBar runs them on a user-defined schedule and builds menu items from their output. Menus can include icons, colors, dropdowns, submenus, and click actions. Items can open URLs, run shell scripts, refresh plugins, or use keyboard shortcuts. Refresh intervals can be set in plugin filenames or with cron syntax in metadata. SwiftBar includes a plugin repository through its Get Plugins menu, and its product page describes hundreds of community-created plugins. Its plugin API is adopted from BitBar, allowing existing BitBar and xbar plugins to run. SwiftBar also supports plugins made with the macOS Shortcuts app and provides a settings interface for their refresh schedule. It is a free, open source project by Ameba, licensed under MIT. SwiftBar requires macOS 12 or later and is available as a direct download or through Homebrew.