Dimble hides the icons you don't need until you do. Hover, click or press a
shortcut and they slide back in, or open in a panel. Small on purpose (three
sections, an editor, ⌘-drag in the bar) and native all the way down. macOS does
the hiding. Built for the menu bar Apple rebuilt in macOS 27. Free, open source,
no account, no analytics.
[!TIP]
Beta channel. Fixes and new features land there first, a stable release
rolls them up every week or two. Turn on "Get beta releases" in
Settings › About, or download the latest beta:
Choose what stays
Three sections, one rule: Visible is always there, Hidden comes back
on a hover or a click, and Always Hidden only appears when you ask for it
(double-click or ⌥-click the chevron). Arrange them in the layout editor
(real app-icon previews, drag-and-drop ordering): the editor is a drawing
the bar follows, and Apply lays the bar out to match it in one pass. Or
skip the window entirely and ⌘-drag icons across the chevron right in the
menu bar. Dimble records that move in
the editor and leaves the rest where they are. And when macOS or an app
shifts an icon out of that order, Dimble puts it back on its own the next
time you pause.
Apply reveals what it needs, lays the whole bar out in one pass with the
pointer hidden for a moment, and reports what it did next to the button. On a
full bar it opens macOS's own « for an icon drawn behind it, moves it, and
closes the « again. A "New items" tile shows where icons Dimble has never seen
will land. Updating leaves your bar alone. The first time Dimble sees a
section out of order, it takes that section's order from the bar instead of
moving anything. And a pending update shows as a banner on every Settings
pane, with a daily reminder until you install it.
System icons hide too. Sound, Battery and friends behave like any
other icon. The few macOS protects (Clock, Control Center) are shown
locked in the editor rather than pretended away, and anything macOS groups together
gets an honest badge instead of a fake handle. Siri and Time Machine, which
macOS only hides as a pair, come as Dimble's own items so each can go
wherever you like.
Reveal on your terms
Every way back in is a setting: hover (with a delay from 0.1 to 0.5 seconds),
a click on empty menu bar space, a double-click for the always-hidden section,
or the chevron itself. The keyboard works too, from any app. ⌥⌘, shows the
hidden icons and ⌃⌥⌘, brings the always-hidden ones with them (you can change
both in Settings › General). Pick how it looks (Instant, Smooth or Fade)
and how it ends, either auto-rehide after a delay you set (instant to 5
seconds) or the moment you click somewhere else.
Hidden icons in a panel
Hidden icons don't have to slide back into the bar. Turn on Panel and they open as tiles in a panel under the menu bar, and the bar stays put. Each tile is a picture of the real icon, and a click opens that icon's real menu. Settings › Panel has the switch, with Menu bar as the default and Row as the same tiles in one strip. It's the big new feature in 0.3.2 (#26).
- Always Hidden sits behind a fold. Click the fold at the end of the panel to open it.
- Type to find. Start typing and press Return. The top match's menu opens, and Esc closes the panel.
- Drag tiles around. Reorder a tile in its section, or drop it on another one. Drag it up onto the bar to show it there.
- ⌘-drag from the bar. Drop an icon on the panel and it's filed in the section under the pointer.
Search the menu bar
Press ⌥⌘K, type a few letters, press Return, and that icon's menu opens right
from its real icon, hidden or not. The arrow keys work in the menu like they
normally do. Search knows the short names people type (bt, wifi) and puts the
icons you open most first. It finds Dimble's settings too, and ⌘K on a result
moves it to another section or gives it its own shortcut. What it learns
stays on your Mac. New in 0.3.1.
Keep your Live Activities
A game's score, a Shortcut running: macOS shows those in a pill beside the
clock, and it takes the pill off the bar while your icons are hidden. Dimble
keeps it there. The pill sits next to the chevron for as long as the activity
runs, a click opens its card, and the system icons come back alongside it.
It's on by default, and it needs Screen Recording.
Settings › Menu Bar › "Show Live Activities" turns it off. New in 0.3.4.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
