Ice on Mac: how to set it up

This page is about Ice, the free menu bar manager for macOS, not about icing an injury. To use Ice: install it from its GitHub releases or with Homebrew, grant Accessibility permission (required) and Screen Recording permission (needed for the layout editor), then hold Command and drag menu bar icons to the left of Ice's divider to hide them. Hidden icons come back when the menu bar is clicked, hovered or scrolled, depending on the settings, and go away again after a delay. Before installing, check the macOS version: the latest stable release dates from October 2024, and the project's issue tracker has an open report that Ice stopped working on macOS 27 Golden Gate. Details below were read from the Ice repository and its source code on 18 October 2026.

Check the macOS version before anything else

Ice supports macOS 14 Sonoma and later, and its README explains that it relies on system APIs that first appeared in macOS 14. Within that range, the right build depends on the system.

macOS	Ice status, as published on GitHub
macOS 14 Sonoma, macOS 15 Sequoia	Stable release 0.11.12, published 29 October 2024
macOS 26 Tahoe	Users reported missing items with 0.11.12; prerelease 0.11.13-dev.2, published 16 September 2025, is the build discussed as the fix
macOS 27 Golden Gate	Open issue "Ice in menu bar not working anymore (MacOS Golden Gate 27)", filed 8 June 2026

The release history is on the releases page, and the macOS 27 report is issue 954, which had 42 comments when checked. Several of those comments point to Thaw, an independently developed open source menu bar manager that publishes separate builds for macOS 26 and macOS 27.

One warning from the same thread: a commenter promoted an unofficial "maintained fork", and other participants pointed out that its install instructions ran an obfuscated shell command that decoded and executed hidden code. Install Ice only from the official repository or its Homebrew cask, and treat any fork offered in an issue thread with suspicion.

Install Ice

The README lists two routes.

Manual installation. Download Ice.zip from the latest release, unzip it, and move Ice into the Applications folder. Prerelease builds such as 0.11.13-dev.2 appear on the same releases page, marked as prereleases.

Homebrew. Run brew install --cask jordanbaird-ice in Terminal. Homebrew installs the current stable release.

Open Ice from Applications. On first launch it shows a permissions window and asks for two permissions before it can manage the bar.

Grant the two permissions, and what each one is for

The permission descriptions below come straight from Ice's source code, so they match what the app shows.

Accessibility is required. Ice uses it to "get real-time information about the menu bar" and to "arrange menu bar items". Without it, Ice cannot hide anything.

Screen Recording is marked as optional, but it unlocks two things: editing the menu bar's appearance, and displaying images of individual menu bar items. The Menu Bar Layout screen, the drag and drop editor for arranging items, shows the message "Menu bar layout requires screen recording permissions" when it is missing. Ice uses the permission to draw pictures of the icons, not to record the screen in the usual sense.

Both are granted in System Settings, under Privacy & Security. If the switch is on but Ice still reports no permission, quitting and reopening Ice is usually enough for it to notice. The current state of both permissions is shown in Ice's Advanced settings, under Permissions.

What Ice does straight after installation

It helps to know the starting state, because several behaviours that look like bugs are simply defaults. The values below are the defaults set in Ice's current source code.

Setting	Default	Where to change it
Show on click	On	General
Show on hover	Off	General
Show on scroll	On	General
Automatically rehide	On, Strategy set to Smart	General
Use Ice Bar	Off	General
Enable always-hidden section	Off	Advanced
Show all sections when Command + dragging	On	Advanced

Two consequences follow. First, scrolling over the menu bar toggles the hidden section from the start, so anyone who scrolls with the pointer near the top of the screen may see icons pop out without meaning to. If that happens, switch off Show on scroll. Second, the always-hidden section does not exist until it is enabled, so guides that mention dragging items into Always-Hidden assume a setting that a fresh install does not have.

Ice also adds a Launch at login option, listed as implemented in its README, which is worth checking early: a menu bar manager that does not start with the Mac leaves every icon visible after each restart, and the first sign is usually a crowded bar on Monday morning. With login launch on and the defaults reviewed, the remaining setup is mostly a matter of deciding which icons belong in which section.

Understand the three sections

Ice divides the right side of the menu bar into three sections, named in the app as Visible, Hidden and Always-Hidden.

• Visible items sit to the right of Ice's icon and are always on screen. This is the place for things that are read rather than clicked, such as the battery or a VPN indicator.
• Hidden items sit to the left of Ice's icon. They are collapsed out of view and appear when the hidden section is revealed.
• Always-Hidden items sit further left still, behind a second divider. This section is switched off by default and is turned on in Advanced settings with Enable always-hidden section. When enabled, Ice's Advanced settings describe it as shown by Option clicking one of Ice's menu bar items.

There are two ways to move items between sections. The quickest is to hold Command and drag an icon in the menu bar itself, which the Menu Bar Layout screen also mentions as a tip. The other is the Menu Bar Layout screen in Ice's settings, which shows each section as a row of item images that can be dragged between rows. That screen needs Screen Recording permission, and it carries one more warning worth knowing: "Ice cannot arrange menu bar items in automatically hidden menu bars". If macOS is set to hide the whole menu bar automatically, switch that off in System Settings, Menu Bar, while arranging items.

A setting in Advanced makes Command dragging easier: Show all sections when Command + dragging menu bar items expands everything during a drag, so items can be dropped into a hidden section without opening it first.

Choose how hidden items come back

The General settings pane controls reveal behaviour. Each option is a separate switch, so any combination works.

• Show on click: clicking an empty area of the menu bar shows hidden items.
• Show on hover: hovering over an empty area of the menu bar shows them. The delay before this happens is set in Advanced, with Show on hover delay.
• Show on scroll: scrolling or swiping in the menu bar toggles hidden items.

On a MacBook with a notch, the hidden items may have nowhere to go, because the notch splits the bar. The Use Ice Bar option shows hidden items in a separate bar below the menu bar instead of expanding the row. Its Location setting offers three behaviours: a location that changes with context, centered below the mouse pointer, or centered below the Ice icon.

A practical starting point for most people: keep Show on click, leave hover off until the habit of clicking feels slow, and turn on Use Ice Bar on any Mac with a notch.

Set up automatic rehiding

Revealed items should go away again without a second click. The Automatically rehide switch in General handles this, with a Strategy picker offering three choices, named in the app as follows:

• Smart: items are rehidden using a smart algorithm.
• Timed: items are rehidden after a fixed amount of time.
• Focused app: items are rehidden when the focused app changes.

Smart is the default, and it suits most people. Timed is predictable and useful when the reveal is used to check something quickly. Focused app suits a habit of revealing an icon, clicking it, and then switching to another app.

A related setting in Advanced, Temporarily shown item delay, sets how long Ice waits before hiding items that were shown temporarily.

Hotkeys, search and the remaining options

The Hotkeys pane is split into Menu Bar Sections, Menu Bar Items and Other. The available actions include:

• Toggle the hidden section
• Toggle the always-hidden section
• Search menu bar items
• Enable the Ice Bar
• Show section dividers
• Toggle application menus

Search menu bar items is the most useful of these once many icons are hidden. It opens a panel where an item can be found by name, without revealing the whole section.

A few other options are worth a look:

• Show Ice icon in General can hide Ice's own icon. Its settings remain reachable by right clicking an empty area of the menu bar.
• Hide application menus when showing menu bar items, in Advanced, makes room by temporarily hiding the left side app menus when hidden items are revealed. This helps on smaller screens.
• Menu bar item spacing, in General, changes the gaps between icons. The app notes that logging out and back in may be needed for it to apply properly. The README labels this feature as beta.
• Menu Bar Appearance has its own pane for tint, shadow, border and custom shapes for the bar.

What Ice does not do yet

Ice's README keeps a roadmap with unchecked items. Among them are profiles for menu bar layouts, menu bar item groups, showing items when trigger conditions are met, different appearance settings for light and dark mode, and hotkeys to temporarily show individual items. Anyone who needs those features, such as an icon that appears only when the battery is low or a different layout for a second display, will need a different tool.

That gap, together with the uncertain status on macOS 26 and 27, is why many Ice users are reviewing their options this year. The comparison worth making is narrow: whether the tool runs on the current macOS, whether hidden items can be opened without expanding the whole row, whether conditions can bring icons out automatically, and whether layouts are remembered per display. A side by side table with prices checked on each vendor's page is on the comparison page, and the features page lists those capabilities for one alternative.

What to do next

On macOS 14 or 15, install Ice from the official repository, grant both permissions, and start with three things: Command drag icons into Hidden, keep the default reveal on click, and leave Automatically rehide on Smart. On macOS 26 or 27, read the latest comments on the issue tracker first, and if Ice is not working there, try a menu bar manager that supports the current system, such as Koffret, which has a fourteen day trial.