How to Hide Menu Bar Icons on Mac with Vanilla

How to Hide Menu Bar Icons on Mac with Vanilla

If your Mac menu bar is looking increasingly cluttered with various menu bar icons, you may be interested in a nice little free utility called Vanilla. Vanilla allows you to hide Mac menu bar icons by placing them into a collapsible and expandable shelf of sorts contained within the menu bar. Vanilla offers a nice alternative solution to as it allows you to declutter the menu bar a bit while still retaining constant visibility and functionality of icons you do want to see and use frequently.

All the hidden menu bar icons are quickly accessible behind the Vanilla arrow buttons too, so theyre not gone for good. If some menu bar icon minimalism sounds interesting to you, then setup is very easy: This is one of those rare third party utilities that is so simple yet useful that youll wonder why it isnt included as a feature in MacOS. I dragged a handful of less used icons into Vanilla, heres what it looks like with some select menu bar icons hidden from Vanilla: And the same select menu bar icons revealed from Vanilla: Each icon is still accessible, but theyre tucked behind the Vanilla menu bar curtain and revealed by toggling the arrow button.

A brief video below shows the Vanilla app being customized and at work, moving icons into the app and then hiding and showing them in the Mac menu bar. Simple, easy. If you later decide you dont like the app and youd rather all of your menu bar icons are visible on the Mac again, just quit the Vanilla app and all of your menu bar icons are returned to their normal position, no longer hidden. * For those who werent aware, you can or even by dragging them out and moving them around while holding the Command key. Use the same Command function to add or remove any items into the Vanilla hidden icon menu bar. There are other similar tools out there that perform similar tasks, but Vanilla is free to download and try out, and its also the simplest of the bunch. Check it out if it sounds like something youd like.