How ChocolateBar works: hide the clutter, or show it in a second row

Your menu bar fills up. Open a password manager, a chat app, a VPN, a sync client and a couple of always-running tools, and the icons start falling off the edge or disappearing behind the notch. ChocolateBar gives the menu bar more room two ways, and you can use either one or both.

A second row, right under the menu bar

Press ⇧⌘B, or click the ChocolateBar icon, and a thin strip opens below the menu bar. Menu bar apps that macOS pushed off the edge or hid behind the notch show up there at full size. Nothing is a copy: click an icon and ChocolateBar clicks the real menu bar item, so the real menu, popover, or toggle fires exactly as if you had reached the original. Optional auto-hide is off by default.

Or stand it up as a column

Prefer your space down the side instead of across the top? The same strip rotates into a tidy vertical column, stacking your hidden icons along one edge of the screen. Useful on a wide display, or when you would rather keep the top of the screen clear.

Hide the clutter entirely

If you would rather not see the overflow at all, ChocolateBar can hide it. An optional toggle tucks the third-party icons crowding your native menu bar behind a chevron, the same decluttering that Bartender and Hidden Bar do. Click the chevron any time to peek at what is hidden. The difference is that ChocolateBar can also surface those same icons in the second row above, so you are never forced to choose between a clean menu bar and reaching your tools quickly.

Click an icon, the real one fires

ChocolateBar reads your menu bar through the macOS Accessibility API, the only public way for an app to see another app's status items. It does not draw fake menus or intercept anything: when you click an icon in the strip it issues a click at the real item's location. New icons appear in the strip the moment an app adds them, and nothing leaves your Mac. Running apps are a separate optional row, off by default: Settings > General > Show running apps, or ⌃⌘S. One chip per app, not a list of windows.

Try it

It works whether or not your Mac has a notch. Runs on macOS 12 Monterey through 15 Sequoia · macOS 26 Tahoe support coming soon. Universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel. $15 one-time, or $12 for the next 20 buyers with code LAUNCH30. 1 year of updates, 7-day refund, 48-hour free trial (no card).

More on the cases people search for: icons hidden behind the notch, too many menu bar icons, Intel Mac, macOS Ventura, and the Bartender alternative comparison.