Modified by Chaehyeon Lee (2026): floating-bar pins, BarNook branding, an independent update channel, the settings panes and the hidden app order. Original project: ronny/ellipsis. Website: devch.co.kr/barnook (한국어).
BarNook hides selected menu bar items on macOS 27. Click its icon to show them. Click again, or wait, to hide them again.
- macOS 27.0 or later.
- BarNook must run from
/Applications.MenuBarAgentmatches the allow-list against apps in that folder only. A copy in any other folder hides its own icon. - BarNook requires Accessibility and Screen Recording. The first window asks for both, and Settings opens once they are allowed. Hiding and showing work in the meantime. See Limits.
- Download
BarNook-X.Y.Z.zipfrom GitHub Releases. - Open the zip. Move
BarNook.appto/Applications. - Open BarNook. Its small nook icon appears in the menu bar. Settings › Menu Bar › "Menu bar icon" picks a different icon for the hidden and shown states.
- Right-click the icon. Select "Settings…". In Settings › Apps, set apps to Hidden. Or, with the Accessibility permission, choose "By position" and Cmd-drag items to the left of the icon. Drag the apps in the Hidden group to set their order in the bar below the menu bar.
On a MacBook with a notch, a shown set may not fit in the menu bar. macOS then collapses the items that do not fit behind a « button, the BarNook icon first. So on a notch display, BarNook shows the hidden apps in a bar below the menu bar instead, one app icon per app, and the menu bar stays as it is. A click on an app in the bar pins its item for you to click in the menu bar. Settings › Menu Bar › "Show hidden items" switches between the bar and the menu bar on any display.
This fork checks its own GitHub Releases for updates with Sparkle. At the second launch, it asks whether it can check on its own. "Check for Updates…" in the icon menu checks now. The original app uses a different signing and update key; it cannot update itself into this fork. Install this fork manually once and reconfigure its separate settings.
- Private API. BarNook loads
MenuBarClientCore.frameworkand uses itsMBAssessmentModeclasses. A macOS update can rename or remove them. BarNook checks for the classes at launch and shows an alert if they are missing. - Focus and the camera/microphone indicator are hidden while any set is hidden. No setting brings them back. This is a limit of the API.
- The hidden sets hold whole apps, not single items. An app with two menu bar items hides both.
- The bar below the menu bar shows app icons, not the items. An item that changes (a timer, a meter) shows only its app icon there. A click on an app in the bar pins its item in the menu bar for you to click, up to three at once; without the Accessibility permission the other items give way while a pin is up.
- An app that runs from outside
/Applicationscannot be pinned into view.MenuBarAgentmatches its allow-list against/Applicationsonly, so macOS hides that item whenever BarNook hides anything. The bar marks such an app. Synology Drive, which runs from~/Library/Application Support, is one. Keep it out of the hidden set, or switch "Show hidden items" to "In the menu bar", which lifts the restriction while the set is shown. - With the Accessibility permission, the Apps list in Settings shows only apps with a menu bar item, the icon can work as a divider (Cmd-drag items to its left to hide them), and the clock zone fits the clock. If the permission is revoked later, the list shows every running app.
- Ice, doesn't work in macOS 27 at the time of writing.
- Thaw, doesn't work in macOS 27 at the time of writing.
- Bartender 7
See docs/development.md for how to build, test and release.
Based on ronny/ellipsis by Ronny Haryanto. Chaehyeon Lee modified the floating bar to pin menu bar items in 2026. These changes are noted in the modified files. The original copyright notice is retained; BarNook remains under the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE and CREDITS.md.