Skip to main content

Getting started with Barred

Barred is a lightweight macOS menu bar manager. It adds a small divider to your menu bar — icons you drag to the left of the divider get tucked away, and a click on Barred reveals them again.

Requirements​

  • macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later

Installation​

Homebrew (recommended):

brew tap mcclowes/barred
brew install --cask barred

Manual:

Download Barred.zip from the latest release, extract it, and drag Barred.app to your Applications folder.

First launch​

On first launch, Barred asks for Accessibility permission. This is required to detect menu bar items from other apps.

  1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
  2. Toggle Barred on.
  3. Barred will start scanning your menu bar automatically.

Barred has no dock icon — it lives entirely in the menu bar.

How it works​

Barred places a thin vertical divider (|) in your menu bar. Everything to the left of the divider is hidden; everything to the right stays visible.

  • Click the divider (or the Barred icon) to expand the hidden section and reveal tucked-away items.
  • After a configurable delay, the hidden section auto-collapses again.
  • To move an icon into or out of the hidden section, hold ⌘ and drag it across the divider. This is the standard macOS gesture for rearranging menu bar icons.

This is the same technique used by Dozer and Hidden Bar: the divider expands to push hidden items off-screen.

Basic usage​

  1. Click Barred's menu bar icon to see how many items it has detected and toggle the hidden section.
  2. ⌘-drag any menu bar icon to the left of the divider to hide it.
  3. ⌘-drag icons back to the right of the divider to reveal them permanently.
  4. Open Settings from the Barred menu to adjust preferences or review detected items.

Next steps​