macOS app · Menu bar
LiteScroller
A lightweight macOS menu bar separator that hides icons, plus a scroller mode that keeps hidden icons reachable even when long app menus or the notch would cover them.
- Role
- Developer
- Timeline
- 2026
- Context
- Personal project
- Stack
- Swift
- AppKit
- macOS
- Accessibility API
Teaser video
Why it exists
Separators like Hidden Bar push icons off-screen and bring them back when opened — but when the active app has a long menu (File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, …) or the screen has a notch, macOS still hides some of them, with no way to reach them. LiteScroller keeps them hidden and shows them in a strip that covers the app menu area instead, and if that is still not wide enough, the strip scrolls.
What it does
- Toggle and toggle-over modes: hide or show the icons left of the
|separator with one click; the second one also hides the app's text menu while open, so the revealed icons have room. - Scroller mode: a strip above the menu bar with all hidden icons, scrolled with the trackpad or mouse wheel; click an icon to open it.
- Dropdown mode: every hidden icon as a menu item with its image and name.
- Auto-close after 5–60 seconds, open at login, follows light/dark, no polling (0% CPU at rest), update and uninstall from the menu.
How it's built
Pure Swift + AppKit in a single source file, no dependencies. The scroller and dropdown modes read the menu bar items and "press" the one you click through the macOS Accessibility API; with screen-recording permission the strip shows the real icon images, captured even while the icons are off-screen.