MenuBarBuddy

A lightweight macOS menu bar manager that lets you hide and show menu bar icons with a single click.

How It Works

MenuBarBuddy adds two icons to your menu bar:

• 📁 Folder (right) — Click to collapse/expand. Always visible.
• ☰ Separator (left of folder) — Marks the boundary. Everything to its left gets hidden when collapsed.

Positioning

By default, all your other menu bar items sit to the left of ☰ and will be hidden when you collapse.

To keep certain items always visible, Cmd-drag them to be between ☰ and 📁.

Controls

• Left-click 📁 to toggle collapse/expand
• Right-click 📁 for the context menu (settings, quit)
• Ctrl+Opt+Space hotkey to toggle from anywhere
• Cmd-drag ☰ to reposition the boundary

Customization

Right-click 📁 → Choose Icons... to:

• Change either icon to any emoji or symbol
• Use the system Character Viewer for the full emoji catalog
• Pick from a grid of quick-pick icons

Requirements

• macOS 14+

Building

swift build
cp .build/debug/MenuBarBuddy MenuBarBuddy.app/Contents/MacOS/MenuBarBuddy
open MenuBarBuddy.app

Dependencies

• HotKey — Global keyboard shortcut support