Ellipsis

Ellipsis hides selected menu bar items on macOS 27. Click its icon to show them. Click again, or wait, to hide them again.

Requirements

• macOS 27.0 or later.
• Ellipsis must run from /Applications. MenuBarAgent matches the allow-list against apps in that folder only. A copy in any other folder hides its own icon.
• No permission is necessary. Ellipsis offers the Accessibility permission once, as an option. See Limits.

Install a release

1. Download Ellipsis-X.Y.Z.zip from GitHub Releases.
2. Open the zip. Move Ellipsis.app to /Applications.
3. Open Ellipsis. The … icon appears in the menu bar.
4. Right-click the icon. Select "Settings…". Put apps in the hidden set. Or, with the Accessibility permission, turn on "Hide apps left of the Ellipsis icon" and Cmd-drag items to the left of the icon.

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 Ellipsis icon first. So on a notch display, Ellipsis 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 opens its menu bar item. Settings › General › "Show hidden items" switches between the bar and the menu bar on any display.

Ellipsis checks 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.

Limits

• Private API. Ellipsis loads MenuBarClientCore.framework and uses its MBAssessmentMode classes. A macOS update can rename or remove them. Ellipsis 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. Opening an item from the bar with one click needs the Accessibility permission; without it, a click puts that app's item alone in the menu bar for you to click.
• The app pickers in Settings list every running app, not only apps with a menu bar item. With the Accessibility permission, they list 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. The permission is optional. Ellipsis asks once at first launch, and again only from Settings.

Alternatives

• 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

Development

See docs/development.md for how to build, test and release.

License

Ellipsis is under the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE.