How to hide menu bar icons on a Mac

Short answer: macOS can remove its own icons from the menu bar through System Settings → Control Center, and you can Command-drag most third-party icons off the bar to remove them. For everything else — hiding icons temporarily rather than permanently — you need a menu bar manager such as Pelmet, Ice, or Hidden Bar.

There are four genuinely different approaches, and they solve different problems. Work down the list.

1. Remove Apple's own icons (built in, permanent)#

Apple-provided status items are controlled centrally.

1. Open System Settings → Control Center.
2. For each entry — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirDrop, Focus, Screen Mirroring, Display, Sound, Now Playing — choose Don't Show in Menu Bar.
3. The clock has its own section: System Settings → Control Center → Clock Options, where you can also remove the date or seconds.
4. Spotlight, Siri and Time Machine each have their own toggles in the same list.

Anything you remove is still one click away inside Control Center. This is the highest-value step because system icons tend to be the ones you look at least.

2. Command-drag third-party icons off the bar (built in, per app)#

Most third-party menu bar icons can be dragged out entirely:

1. Hold Command.
2. Drag the icon downward, out of the menu bar.
3. Release. The icon disappears with a small puff.

Two caveats. Not every app supports it — some redraw their icon immediately — and for many apps this only hides the icon until the app relaunches. The reliable way to remove a third-party icon for good is usually a setting inside that app itself: look for "Show icon in menu bar" in its preferences.

3. Hide the whole menu bar (built in, situational)#

If you want the bar gone rather than tidied:

1. System Settings → Control Center → Automatically hide and show the menu bar.
2. Choose Always, On Desktop Only, In Full Screen Only, or Never.

The bar slides away and returns when you move the pointer to the top of the screen. Worth knowing this does not create extra room for icons — when the bar reappears, the same width limit applies, so on a notched MacBook the same icons are still missing.

4. Use a menu bar manager (the real answer)#

The built-in options are all-or-nothing: an icon is either in the bar or it is not. What most people actually want is temporarily out of sight, one shortcut away. That is what a menu bar manager does.

They all work the same way. A divider is placed in your menu bar; icons to one side of it collapse out of view; a chevron or a keyboard shortcut brings them back.

The free options#

• Pelmet — free, MIT licensed, needs no permissions. Hides icons behind a ╱ divider, toggles with ⌥⌘B, and is the only tool that detects and names the icons the MacBook notch hid.
• Ice — free, GPL-3.0, and the most feature-complete free option: three sections, its own panel, search, custom hotkeys, appearance controls. See Pelmet vs Ice.
• Hidden Bar — free, MIT, deliberately minimal. One chevron, nothing else. See Pelmet vs Hidden Bar.

The paid options#

• Bartender — the deepest feature set on macOS, including menu bar search and per-app rules, in exchange for a licence fee and both Screen Recording and Accessibility permission. See Pelmet vs Bartender.
• Vanilla — simple, with a free tier; hotkeys, auto-hide and launch-at-login are part of the paid upgrade. See Pelmet vs Vanilla.

How hiding with Pelmet works#

Worth understanding, because it explains why no permissions are needed.

Pelmet places two items in your menu bar: a ╱ divider and a ‹ toggle.

[hidden icons…]  ╱  [always-visible icons…]  ‹  clock
                 │                           │
             separator                    toggle

Everything to the left of the divider is managed. To collapse them, Pelmet inflates the divider's own width until the icons to its left are pushed past the edge of the screen. To bring them back, it shrinks the divider again. The apps are never quit, restarted, or touched — their icons are simply off-screen.

This is the same expanding-spacer technique Hidden Bar and Dozer use, and it needs no Screen Recording permission, no Accessibility permission, and no private API.

Setting it up#

1. Install: brew install --cask ismatBabirli/pelmet/pelmet, or download the DMG.
2. Look next to the clock — Pelmet has no Dock icon and no window.
3. Hold Command and drag every icon you always want visible to the right of the ╱.
4. Press ⌥⌘B. Everything left of the divider disappears. Press it again to bring it back.
5. Optional: turn on Show hidden items on hover in Settings, and the icons reappear when your pointer enters the menu bar.

Choosing between the approaches#

Most tidy menu bars are a combination: strip out the system icons you never read, then park the rest behind a divider.