One Switch menu bar icon: hide it or keep it

Most menu bar cleanups start the same way: count the icons, pick the ones that get clicked least, turn them off. That works for a backup agent or a screenshot tool, because each of those icons maps to one job. It does not work cleanly for One Switch, because that icon is not one job. It is a drawer holding roughly eight of them.

So the decision is different in shape. Before removing it, it is worth knowing which toggles are inside, which of those macOS already exposes somewhere else, and which ones leave a state behind that becomes invisible once the icon is gone.

What the icon is holding

The product page for One Switch names five toggles with a demo for each: hide desktop icons, dark mode, Keep Awake, screen saver, and AirPods connection. The Setapp listing for the same app adds Do Not Disturb with scheduling, showing hidden files, and changing display resolution. The Setapp copy also states that the set shown in the menu bar is configurable and that unused toggles can be disabled.

That listing puts the app at version 1.35.4, macOS 12.0 or later, 16.3 MB, in 10 languages, with a 98 percent rating across 2021 ratings. Those figures were current on 10 September 2026 and will move.

The useful exercise here takes about thirty seconds. Recall the last month and count how many of those toggles were actually used. The answer tends to be far below eight. If it is five or more, the icon is earning its slot outright. If it is one or two, the icon is functioning as storage for features that are rarely opened, and the question becomes whether those one or two have a reachable alternative.

That framing matters because removing the icon does not remove one capability. It removes one entry point to a set of capabilities, most of which macOS also exposes through Control Center, System Settings, or a keyboard shortcut. The cost of hiding is not the toggles. It is the number of clicks between the current screen and the toggle that gets used.

The row has a hard width limit

Menu bar crowding is not a matter of taste. The row grows leftward from the right edge and stops when it runs out of room. On a MacBook with a notch, items that would land under the cutout are simply not drawn, so an app that is running perfectly can have no visible icon at all.

This changes with the display. Plugging into an external monitor changes the available width, which means the same set of installed apps can produce a different visible set depending on where the Mac is sitting at that moment. Changing resolution has the same effect. An icon that "disappeared" after connecting a dock has usually not crashed.

Knowing this changes the order of operations. Before deciding what to hide, it is worth confirming how much room is actually being contested. macOS lets Control Center items such as Bluetooth, Sound, and Focus be shown always, shown when active, or hidden entirely, and thinning those first often recovers two or three slots without touching any third party app. Whatever is left after that is the real decision.

Three options, not two

The framing of "keep or remove" hides a third option that is usually the right first move.

Option	Reaching a toggle	Seeing current state	Slots used
Leave it visible	One click opens all of them	Always in view	One
Collapse behind an organizer	Expand, then click	Visible once expanded	None
Turn the icon off	Reopen the app or use macOS directly	Not visible	None

The second row is the reversible one. Promoting a collapsed item back to always visible takes a second. Reversing the third row means finding the setting again, which is harder than it sounds when the app's only entry point was the icon that just got turned off.

That asymmetry suggests an order. Collapse first, live with it for a week, count how many times the item got expanded. Zero or one time means turning the icon off costs nothing. Five or more times means the icon should stay visible. Anything between belongs in the middle row permanently, which is a legitimate destination and not a compromise.

Toggles that leave state behind

The toggles inside this app split into two groups, and the split decides how risky hiding is.

Some are momentary. Starting the screen saver, changing resolution, or revealing hidden files produces a visible result immediately. Losing quick access to these makes them slower to reach and nothing else. Nothing can be left in a strange state without the user noticing.

Others persist. Keep Awake and Do Not Disturb both stay on until turned off, and neither one is visible by looking at the screen. A Mac left with Keep Awake enabled will not sleep when the lid closes, and the battery drain shows up hours later. Do Not Disturb left on means notifications quietly stop arriving. For these two, the menu bar icon is doing a second job: it is the reminder that something is still switched on.

Dark mode and hidden desktop icons sit in between. They persist, but the current state is obvious from the screen itself, so no reminder is needed.

If Keep Awake or Do Not Disturb are part of daily use, decide on a replacement way to check their state before turning the icon off. Collapsing keeps that check available, since expanding the row shows the item. Turning the icon off removes it.

Trimming from the inside before trimming the row

There is a step available before the keep or remove question, and it is often enough on its own. The app's drop down includes a Customize button that opens preferences, where individual toggles can be disabled. The Setapp description describes the same behaviour: choose which toggles appear and disable the ones that are not used regularly.

That does not free a menu bar slot. What it does is shorten the list that appears after clicking, which is a different problem with the same feeling. An eight item drawer that gets used for one thing is annoying every time it opens. A two item drawer is not.

Running that cleanup usually clarifies the bigger decision too. Once the drawer only holds what actually gets used, the remaining question is narrow: is one click to reach these two things worth one permanent slot. That is a much easier question than the one it started as.

Position matters as much as presence

Hiding is not the only lever. macOS allows menu bar items to be reordered by holding Command and dragging them, and position has a real effect on how fast something is to hit.

The right side of the row, near the clock and Control Center, is the fastest area to reach and the least likely to be swallowed by a notch. The far left of the item area is the slowest and the first to disappear when the row runs long. An icon that gets clicked several times a day belongs on the right. An icon kept purely for its status display can sit further left, since reading it does not require aiming at it.

For a bundle like this one, position interacts with what is inside. If the drawer is being kept because Keep Awake needs to be visible, it is being read rather than clicked, and it can sit further out. If it is being kept because AirPods get connected constantly, it is being clicked, and it should sit close to the clock. Working out which of those is true often settles the hide question at the same time, because an icon that is only ever read has a lower bar to clear than one that is aimed at.

Reordering also makes the trial in the previous section cleaner. Moving the icon to the far left for a week approximates hiding it, at zero risk, and reveals how much the extra distance actually costs.

Menu bar arrangements drift after updates

Whatever arrangement gets settled on will not stay settled by itself. Major macOS updates reset some ordering, reinstate Control Center items that were hidden, and require menu bar permissions to be granted again. New apps add themselves at install time without asking. Six months after a cleanup, the row usually looks nothing like it did on the day it was tidied.

The cheap defence is a screenshot. Capturing the menu bar right after arranging it gives a reference that takes seconds to restore from, instead of trying to reconstruct which items were deliberately hidden and which ones crept back. It also makes the next cleanup faster, since the difference between the screenshot and the current row is exactly the list of things that arrived without permission.

Purchase or subscription changes the answer

How the app was obtained changes the economics of leaving it in place.

Bought directly, the licence is a one time purchase sold per device. Checked on 10 September 2026, the published checkout prices were 4.99 US dollars for one device, 7.99 for two, and 16.99 for five. The vendor FAQ states that updates are free and the licence is lifetime, and that the trial runs 7 days with no prepayment.

Obtained through Setapp, the app is one title inside a subscription that starts at 14.99 US dollars per month and includes hundreds of others.

The practical difference is this. On a one time licence, an unused toggle costs nothing ongoing, so keeping the icon collapsed rather than removed is free. On a subscription, the app itself is not the unit being paid for, so an unused set of toggles is not a reason to change anything by itself. Either way, the icon decision and the money decision are separate, and mixing them tends to produce a bad version of both.

Two Macs are worth handling separately as well. Since licences are counted per device, and since the toggles used on a work machine are rarely the toggles used on a travel machine, there is no reason to make both menu bars identical. Visible on one and collapsed on the other is a perfectly stable arrangement.

What to check if collapsing

Two properties decide whether collapsing actually works for an app like this one. First, whether a hidden item can be clicked without expanding the whole row, since this icon opens a menu rather than performing an action. Second, whether items can be split between always hidden and shown only when relevant, so that Keep Awake can surface when active while the rest stays out of sight.

The features page covers how a hidden item gets opened and what happens to a click while the bar is collapsed. Permissions are the other practical hurdle: rearranging or hiding menu bar items requires grants from macOS, and those need re-approving after some system updates. The FAQ covers what gets asked for and when. If several organizers are on the shortlist, the comparison page lays out supported macOS ranges and distribution models side by side, which is where these tools differ most.

What to change first

Thin the Control Center items first, since that costs nothing and often recovers the room being fought over. Then collapse the One Switch icon rather than turning it off, and count expansions for a week. Let that number decide, and if collapsing is where it lands, Koffret is one way to do it.