Hiding menu bar icons on macOS 27, where the old trick stopped working

A busy menu bar gets crowded, and on a Mac with a notch the icons on the right can disappear under it. Menu bar managers solve that by hiding the icons you rarely use. hidnr is a small, free one that I built for macOS 27, and it still runs on macOS 14 and later.

The classic trick

On macOS 14 to 26, menu bar managers rely on a simple idea. You put a thin divider next to the app's own icon, and when you want to hide things, the app stretches the divider so wide that every icon to its left is pushed off the screen. Click again and the divider shrinks back. hidnr does exactly this on those versions. You hold Command and drag the icons you want out of the way to the left of the h.

Why it stopped working

On macOS 27 that trick no longer works. So hidnr takes a different route there: it asks macOS to show only the apps on the visible side of the h. This changes what hiding means. On macOS 27 hiding is per app, not per icon position, and the system's own items such as the clock, Wi-Fi and Control Center always stay visible.

Small details that made it feel right

• The real icon stays put. macOS 27 keeps hidnr's own icon only when the app is installed in Applications, which the DMG and Homebrew both do. Installed that way, hidnr needs no stand-in icon. Run from anywhere else, it falls back to a stand-in h and suggests moving to Applications.
• The stand-in is placed from a snapshot taken just before hiding, because macOS keeps reporting hidden icons at their old positions.
• Multiple displays. After hiding on one display and working on another, the stand-in once jumped beside the notch. Positions from another display are no longer compared with the snapshot.
• Full screen. The stand-in used to float over full-screen videos and apps. It now hides while a display is in full screen and returns when you reveal the menu bar.
• A clear permission path. On macOS 27, hidnr needs the Accessibility permission to see where each icon sits. Clicking the h without it now opens the permission guide instead of silently doing nothing.

Using it

• Hold Command and drag the icons you want out of the way to the left of the hidnr h.
• Click the h to hide or show them. Right-click it for the quick panel.
• On macOS 27, allow hidnr in System Settings, Privacy and Security, Accessibility the first time it asks.
• Pick which apps stay visible in the Icons page of Settings. Hiding can happen again automatically after anything from 5 seconds to a minute, and hidnr can open when you log in.
• If you ever want every icon back, open hidnr again from Spotlight or Finder.

Installing it

brew tap rokib16x/hidnr https://github.com/rokib16x/hidnr
brew trust --tap rokib16x/hidnr
brew install --cask hidnr

You can also download the DMG from the latest release and drag hidnr into Applications. Keep it in Applications: on macOS 27, that is what lets the real h stay visible while icons are hidden.

Releases are built as a universal app, signed with a Developer ID certificate, notarized and stapled, and the Homebrew cask updates automatically from the release workflow. That is why the app opens without an "unidentified developer" warning. hidnr is MIT licensed, and the code is on GitHub.