How ChocolateBar works: hide the clutter, or show it in a second row
ChocolateBar is a native Mac menu bar manager. It can hide the icons crowding your menu bar, or show them in a second row below it, along with the apps you have open. Here is what that looks like.
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
Turn it on and a thin strip appears below the menu bar. Every status icon that macOS pushed off the edge or hid behind the notch shows up there at full size, next to the app windows you have open. 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.
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 and open windows 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, Ice, 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 and open windows 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, and when you click a window it brings the real window forward. So switching apps no longer means Cmd-Tab roulette or a trip to the Dock. New icons appear in the strip the moment an app adds them, and nothing leaves your Mac.
Try it
ChocolateBar is a native universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, on macOS Monterey or later. It works whether or not your Mac has a notch. It is a one-time $15 purchase with a 7-day refund, and you can try it free for 48 hours first.
Give your menu bar a second row.
ChocolateBar is a native Mac app (Apple Silicon and Intel, Monterey or later). $15, one-time. Try it free for 48 hours.