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Warning

⚠️ UNOFFICIAL BUILD. This is a community fork of Hidden Bar maintained by Vitalii Tereshchuk (xVoLAnD)https://dotoca.net, with added support for macOS 27 Golden Gate. It is not the official Dwarves Foundation release. The macOS 27 hide-mechanism fix originates from upstream PR #396 by Skyler (skuthus). Download the fork build from the Releases page.

Maintainer (this fork)

Role Name Contact
Fork maintainer, build & macOS 27 verification Vitalii Tereshchuk (xVoLAnD) https://dotoca.net

Upstream project: dwarvesf/hidden © Dwarves Foundation. The macOS 27 Golden Gate hide-mechanism fix originates from upstream PR #396 by Skyler (skuthus); this fork packages, builds, and verifies it for macOS 27.

Hideout

Hideout lets you hide menu bar items to give your Mac a cleaner look.

🚀 Install

 App Store

AppStore

Others

The Hideout is notarized before distributed out side App Store. It's safe to use 👍

Using Homebrew

This fork ships its own Homebrew cask so you install this build — not the upstream one:

brew install --cask https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xvoland/hideout/main/Casks/hideout.rb

This pulls the latest macOS 27 "Golden Gate" build from the xvoland/hidden Releases page. The build is unsigned, so before the first launch run:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Hideout.app

⚠️ Do not use brew install --cask hiddenbar — that installs the upstream Dwarves Foundation release, which does not include the macOS 27 fork changes. The command above is the one for this fork.

Manual download

  • Download latest version
  • Open and drag the app to the Applications folder.
  • Launch Hideout and drag the icon in your menu bar (hold CMD) to the right so it is between some other icons.

⚙️ Hiding (macOS 27)

macOS 27 Golden Gate rebuilt the menu bar as a single window. Hiding is always native since v1.19: Hideout asks macOS's private MenuBarClientCore (assessment mode) to keep only an allow-list visible. macOS does the hiding/reflow itself — independent of display width, notch, or front app.

Requirements: the direct (non-sandboxed) build on macOS 27 (this GitHub/ad-hoc release, compiled with HIDDENBAR_NATIVE_VISIBILITY=1), plus Accessibility permission (prompted on first collapse). Where unavailable (sandboxed builds, pre-27), collapsing reports unavailable and the arrow stays put.

🤔 Why native hiding?

macOS historically had no public API to hide other apps' menu-bar icons. Hideout used a geometry hack: inflate a separator NSStatusItem so icons to its left slide out of view.

macOS era What changed Consequence
≤ 26 (Ventura/Sonoma/Sequoia) Each status item = its own window. Inflating the separator pushes icons off-screen. Geometry hiding worked.
27 Golden Gate Menu bar became one window with a native overflow («). Inflating past half the screen width drops the item instead of clamping, and length changes no longer displace neighbours. Geometry hiding is dead on 27 — hiding must go through the system.
27 + private API macOS 27 introduced MenuBarClientCore (assessment mode) — a private framework that can restrict the menu bar to an allow-list. Native hiding — asks macOS to hide everything except the allow-list. Width-independent, notch-aware.

Native requires the direct (non-sandboxed) build, macOS 27+, and Accessibility permission. It uses a private API Apple may change. For macOS ≤ 26, upstream dwarvesf/hidden remains the path.

🕹 Usage

  • + drag to move the Hidden icons around in the menu bar.
  • Click the Arrow icon to hide menu bar items.

📚 Documentation

  • Manual: every setting, the hidden Terminal-only options, and troubleshooting.
  • Architecture: how the hiding trick works, topology, and known limits.
  • Maintainer runbook: build, behavioral verification, and release process.

Requirements

macOS version >= 13.0 (Ventura)

Running an older macOS? The last release supporting macOS 10.13 High Sierra through 12 Monterey is upstream v1.10 (published by the original Dwarves Foundation project; this fork does not ship pre-Ventura builds). Later versions require macOS 13 because autostart moved to the SMAppService API introduced there.

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License

MIT © Dwarves Foundation

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