Take back your menu bar. Hide what you don't need, find anything in a keystroke,
and make the bar look the way you want.
Free and open source. Private by design: no tracking, no account, nothing ever leaves your Mac.

Download · Install · Features · Integrations · macOS 27 status · Contributing

Why Thaw

• Free, and free to keep. No purchase, no subscription, and no upgrade fee when macOS ships a new version.
• Open source, GPL-3.0. Read the code, build it yourself, fork it.
• No tracking, no account. No analytics, no telemetry, no sign-up.
• Screen Recording is optional. Hiding, revealing, and rearranging items all work without it. Grant it only if you want menu bar item previews and appearance tinting.
• Light on your Mac. A small, steady memory footprint, and no background bloat.
• Signed and notarized by Apple, with verifiable releases and security practices tracked against the OpenSSF Best Practices criteria.

Features

• Declutter your menu bar: hide icons you do not need and keep an always-hidden section for the rest
• Reveal items fast: show hidden icons by hover, click, scroll/swipe, or hotkey
• Search and jump: find any menu bar item instantly from the keyboard
• Switch layouts by context: save profiles for work, focus, and presenting
• Style the bar: tint, gradient, shadow, border, and custom shapes, per light/dark mode
• Built for modern macOS: supports macOS 26 and 27, including notch-friendly layouts via the Thaw Bar

Full feature list — 20+ more, including drag-and-drop arrangement, item spacing, and hotkeys

Menu bar item management

• Hide menu bar items
• "Always-hidden" menu bar section
• Show hidden menu bar items when hovering over the menu bar
• Show hidden menu bar items when an empty area in the menu bar is clicked
• Show hidden menu bar items by scrolling or swiping in the menu bar
• Automatically rehide menu bar items
• Hide application menus when they overlap with shown menu bar items
• Drag and drop interface to arrange individual menu bar items
• Display hidden menu bar items in a separate bar (e.g. for MacBooks with the notch)
• Search menu bar items
• Menu bar item spacing
• Profiles for menu bar layout

Menu bar appearance

• Menu bar tint (solid and gradient)
• Menu bar shadow
• Menu bar border
• Custom menu bar shapes (rounded and/or split)
• Remove background behind menu bar (macOS setting)
• Different settings for light/dark mode

Hotkeys

• Toggle individual menu bar sections
• Show the search panel
• Enable/disable the Thaw Bar
• Show/hide section divider icons
• Toggle application menus

Screenshots

Item layout	Show hidden items below the menu bar
Drag-and-drop arrangement	Customize the appearance
Menu bar item search

Integrations

Every core action is a thaw:// deep link, so Thaw plugs into the launcher you already use.

• Raycast — official extension. Toggle sections, open search, and change settings without leaving Raycast.
• Droppy — pair Thaw with Droppy's shelf and extras for a full menu bar suite.
• Anything else — Alfred, Shortcuts, Keyboard Maestro, BetterTouchTool, or a shell script.

open "thaw://toggle-hidden"
open "thaw://search"
open "thaw://open-settings"

Full reference, including reading and writing settings: docs/URI_SCHEMES.md.

Install

brew install thaw        # stable
brew install thaw@beta   # beta, or stable if it is newer

Or grab the .dmg from the latest release and drag Thaw to Applications.

Needs macOS 26+. Thaw asks for Accessibility on first launch to move menu bar items; Screen Recording is optional. Stuck? See Frequent issues.

Note

Thaw is an actively maintained fork of Ice, focused on fixes, compatibility, and new features.

Languages

Thaw speaks 20 languages, thanks to translators around the world.

🇮🇩 Bahasa Indonesia	🇨🇿 Čeština	🇩🇪 🇦🇹 Deutsch	🇬🇧 🇺🇸 English
🇪🇸 🇲🇽 Español	🇫🇷 Français	🇮🇹 Italiano	🇭🇺 Magyar
🇳🇱 🇧🇪 Nederlands	🇵🇱 Polski	🇧🇷 Português (Brasil)	🇹🇷 Türkçe
🇷🇺 Русский	🇺🇦 Українська*	🇹🇭 ภาษาไทย	🇻🇳 Tiếng Việt*
🇯🇵 日本語	🇰🇷 한국어	🇨🇳 简体中文	🇹🇼 正體中文

Missing yours, or spotted something off? Translate Thaw on Crowdin — you can request new languages there too. Everyone who has translated Thaw is named in Credits.

_{* Currently only in the development branch.}

Contributors

This project exists thanks to the awesome people who contribute code and documentation. Translations happen on Crowdin rather than in git, so translators are credited separately in Credits.

Want to contribute? Start with Ways to contribute. Pull requests are welcome against the development branch (see Contributing).

Project documentation

• Contributing
• Credits
• Governance
• Security policy
• Roadmap
• Architecture
• Assurance case
• Verifying releases
• Release and update distribution
• URI schemes

License

Thaw is available under the GPL-3.0 license.