Hide Icons
Hide your macOS menu bar icons with one click. No private APIs, no Accessibility permission, just a clean chevron.
What it does
Your menu bar gets cluttered fast. Bartender is paid and asks for Accessibility permission. Hidden Bar works but feels stuck in 2015. Hide Icons is a one-file Swift utility that does the spacer trick: Cmd-drag the icons you want hidden to the left of the chevron, click the chevron, they're pushed off screen. Click again, they're back.
- One chevron in your menu bar — that's the whole UI
- Native Swift, ~5 MB RAM
- No private APIs, no Accessibility permission
- No helper daemon, no telemetry, no network calls
- Auto-starts at login (optional)
- Open source — Swift Package Manager build
Menu bar se brzo zatrpa ikonama. Bartender se plaća i traži Accessibility dozvolu. Hidden Bar radi, ali UI je zaglavljen u 2015. Hide Icons je Swift utility koji koristi spacer trik: Cmd-drag ikone koje želiš sakriti lijevo od chevrona, klikni chevron, izguraju se izvan ekrana. Klikni opet — vraćaju se.
- Jedan chevron u menu baru — to je cijeli UI
- Nativni Swift, ~5 MB RAM
- Bez private API-ja, bez Accessibility dozvole
- Bez helper daemona, bez telemetrije, bez mrežnih poziva
- Automatsko pokretanje pri prijavi (opcionalno)
- Open source — Swift Package Manager build
How it works
macOS doesn't actually let you hide other apps' menu bar icons. There's no public API for it — that's why Bartender needs Accessibility permission. Hide Icons takes a different route: it creates two NSStatusItems. One is the visible chevron. The other is an invisible spacer that can grow to 10,000 pixels wide.
When you click the chevron, the spacer expands and physically pushes the icons to its left off the right edge of your screen. Click again, the spacer shrinks back to zero and the icons reflow into view. No private frameworks, no Accessibility prompt, no system hacks — just the documented status-bar geometry being used creatively.
The whole app is a Swift Package with three short files. The icon is generated programmatically through Core Graphics by a separate script — no Figma, no Sketch, fully reproducible from the command line.
macOS te ne pušta da skriješ ikone drugih appova u menu baru. Nema javnog API-ja za to — zbog toga Bartender treba Accessibility dozvolu. Hide Icons ide drugim putem: kreira dva NSStatusItem-a. Jedan je vidljivi chevron. Drugi je nevidljivi spacer koji se može raširiti do 10.000 piksela.
Kad klikneš chevron, spacer se proširi i fizički gura ikone lijevo od njega izvan desnog ruba ekrana. Klikni opet, spacer se skupi na nulu i ikone se vrate u prikaz. Bez private frameworka, bez Accessibility prompta, bez system hackova — samo dokumentirana geometrija status bar-a iskorištena kreativno.
Cijela aplikacija je Swift Package s tri kratke datoteke. Ikona je generirana programski preko Core Graphics zasebnom skriptom — bez Figme, bez Sketcha, potpuno reproducibilna iz terminala.
Build story
Hide Icons was built in about 90 minutes pair-programming with Claude. The first attempt used a custom NSView for the chevron and failed silently — the view never drew in the status bar button. The fix: a two-item architecture, with button.image for the visible chevron and a separate invisible status item for the spacer. Full source on GitHub. This kind of one-evening utility shipping is what I do for founders building SaaS and AI products at Codigit.
Hide Icons je izgrađen u oko 90 minuta pair-programmingom s Claudeom. Prvi pokušaj koristio je custom NSView za chevron i tiho propadao — view se nikad nije crtao u status bar buttonu. Fix: arhitektura s dva itema, gdje je button.image vidljivi chevron, a zasebni nevidljivi NSStatusItem služi kao spacer. Kompletan source na GitHubu. Ovaj tip večernjeg shippanja utility appova je ono što radim za founderse koji grade SaaS i AI proizvode kroz Codigit.