How to Reorganize Your Menu Bar

The menu bar is great place to access lightweight utilities, like our freeware app XMenu or DEVONthink's Sorter. However, it is a finite space, further reduced by the notch on newer Apple laptops. We often get support requests saying our apps won’t run, but it often turns out the menu bar is just overcrowded. Fortunately, there is a great utility to help clean things up.

Once considered the de facto choice for menu bar management, Bartender is still available and a capable commercial option. However, there also is a very powerful free option: Ice by Jordan Baird. It supports:

• Adding often used apps to the menu bar while hiding others
• Accessing the hidden apps in a floating toolbar, when needed
• Adding custom styling including splitting the toolbar into different sections and applying color schemes
• Spotlight-style searching for a running menu bar app
• Support for quick access via hotkeys

So if you run many menu bar apps that you don’t interact with often, Ice is a nice way to hide them away and leave the others visible and ready to use.

By the way, though this is a free utility, you can also donate to Jordan and help support an indie developer and continued work on the project!

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