from Hacker News

Ice: Powerful open source menu bar manager for macOS

by Khaine on 1/30/25, 10:38 PM with 4 comments

• by giobox on 1/30/25, 11:01 PM

  Definitely a place for this in the market, especially given the whole fiasco around the secret BarTender change of ownership:

  > https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/04/bartender-mac-app-new-o...

  I hate when OS utilities are closed source like BarTender to begin with, so a new open source alternative is ideal.

  The worst offender in this realm for me is the widely used FanControl app on Windows, for managing CPU/case fans etc. The app is completely free of charge, but developer hides source.

  > https://getfancontrol.com/

  The github link for fancontrol is just used to upload a release zip - no source available to view. Why, when tool is freeware? There are no good reasons to obfuscate etc etc.

• by oidar on 1/30/25, 11:00 PM

  The debacle [1] that caused this to be on everyone's radar initial has me hoping that there will be a group formed that audits open source software for maliciousness. I know that is what virus scanners are for, but there should be a more transparent way to understand what changed without putting so much trust in unknown, anonymous developers.

  [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40584606

• by TMWNN on 1/30/25, 11:31 PM

  I could never get Hidden Bar to work correctly. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but I ran Hidden Bar for months and the hidden icons only became visible left of the notch after clicking > maybe twice, briefly, and I could never figure out what I did differently.

  iBar immediately worked correctly, but Ice is superior and completely free.

• by luckman212 on 2/8/25, 11:55 PM

  I love Ice as well. Hoping development resumes soon, the developer got busy with life a few months ago and there are a few QoL changes that would really elevate this. Notably, the ability to declare the location where "new" icons are placed (left, right, hidden etc)

  https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice/issues/344