The notch hides menu bar icons, and macOS gives you no way to reach them.
macOS lays out menu bar icons right to left, and the ones that would land under the notch are silently hidden. No indicator, no overflow arrow, nothing. Menu bar icons missing on your MacBook? They’re still running behind the notch, invisible and unreachable. It’s common enough that Tailscale wrote an engineering post about redesigning their app to escape it.
hover to reveal
Hover the notch: it glows, then opens. The notch itself swells downward, and every hidden status item is just there. Move away and it closes. No setup, no configuration.
real menus
Click a revealed icon and its actual menu opens, not a re-implementation. App names never truncate. Escape closes anything it opened.
keyboard path
⌃⌥⌘M toggles the reveal from anywhere, and a menu bar item (▾) works as a third trigger. Opened by hover, closed by hover; the interaction is symmetric.
the glow means something
The outline draws itself in exactly the hover-dwell time: a completed outline is the decision to open. It breathes while scanning and flares when done. Reduce Motion respected.
private by design
One permission, Accessibility, asked once. It reads each item’s name and icon; it never captures your screen. And there is no network code at all: no analytics, no accounts, nothing leaves your Mac.
native and tiny
Pure AppKit, zero dependencies, no Electron. Runs in about 11 MB of memory. Signed and notarized direct download.
Everything else asks you to redesign your menu bar first. Notcho Libre is the only one aimed at the notch itself.
Menu bar managers are good tools solving a different problem: too many icons. They get yours back by having you hide and rearrange things until nothing collides with the notch. That’s a settings session, and your menu bar is never the same again. This is one hover, and it changes nothing.
| notcho libre | Bartender 6 | Ice | NotchNook | Hidden Bar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Icons the notch hid | Menu bar clutter | Menu bar clutter | Notch dead space | Menu bar clutter |
| Reaching an icon | Hover the notch | Reorganize first | Reorganize first | Not what it does | Reorganize first |
| Setup | None | A settings session | A settings session | A settings session | A settings session |
| Your menu bar | Untouched | You rearrange it | You rearrange it | Untouched | You rearrange it |
| Price | $8 once | $20 once | Free | $25 or $3/mo | Free |
| Subscription | Never | No | No | Optional | No |
Notcho Libre isn’t trying to run your menu bar, and it doesn’t mind if something else does: it runs fine alongside Ice or Bartender.
On trust: Notcho Libre contains no network code at all. No accounts, no analytics, no telemetry, nothing to sync and nothing to opt out of. It asks for one permission, Accessibility, and it will never ask for Screen Recording, because it never looks at your screen. The app is closed source, signed and notarized by Apple, and the $8 buys it outright along with every 1.x update as Apple keeps moving things around.
get it launch week
$6 then $8 · one-time
Yours forever, with every 1.x update. No subscription, ever.
Hover-to-reveal, real menus, the hotkey, the glow: all of it. One payment, no subscription.
Get Notcho LibreSigned & notarized direct download · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon
supporter same app
$20
The same app, a bigger thank-you.
For people who want small, private, native utilities to keep existing. You get nothing extra except my sincere thanks and a nicer receipt.
Support the luchadorWhy does it need Accessibility permission?
That’s how it finds every app’s status items and presses them for you. It’s the only permission it asks for, once. It doesn’t capture your screen.
Does anything leave my Mac?
No. There is no network code in the app. No analytics, no accounts, no sync.
Does it work on Macs without a notch?
The hover-the-notch feature needs a notch (MacBook Pro 2021 and later, MacBook Air 2022 and later). Revealing items lost to ordinary menu bar overflow on any Mac is on the roadmap.
Does it work with external displays?
Yes. The notch trigger lives on the built-in display, and hidden items only exist when the menu bar is on the notched screen.
Intel Macs?
Currently Apple Silicon only.
Why isn’t it on the Mac App Store?
Apple’s sandbox forbids the Accessibility calls the app is built on; every app in this category distributes directly for the same reason. The download is signed and notarized, straight from me.
Why “Notcho Libre”?
Say it like the movie. The luchador frees what macOS keeps locked up. Libre means free.
I lost a VPN icon to the notch and every fix on offer was a settings session. I wanted one gesture: hover the thing that took your icons, and it gives them back.
unmask the notch.
One hover brings back every icon the notch is hiding. $6 this week, yours forever.