IconFold

A lightweight macOS menu bar utility with a single button that folds all icons to its right — click to hide, click again to show.

What It Does

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 fold button (shows hidden count)

IconFold places a single fold button in your menu bar. Position it to the left of the icons you want to hide (CMD+drag), then click to toggle.

• Click to fold — hides all icons to the right (pushes them off-screen)
• Click to unfold — reveals them again
• Shows hidden count — displays a badge with the estimated number of hidden icons
• Auto-hide — automatically folds when you click outside the menu bar

Usage

1. Launch IconFold — a button → appears in the menu bar
2. CMD+drag it to the left of the icons you want to hide
3. Click → 3 to fold (hides icons, shows ← N with count)
4. Click ← to unfold

Click Actions

Action	Result
Left click	Toggle fold/unfold
Right click	Show context menu

Context Menu

• Show Icons / Hide Icons — toggle manually
• Auto-hide Enabled / Disabled — auto-collapse when clicking outside menu bar
• Quit IconFold

Build

cd IconFold
xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project IconFold.xcodeproj -scheme IconFold -configuration Debug build

The built app will be in:

~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/IconFold-*/Build/Products/Debug/IconFold.app

How It Works

IconFold uses a single NSStatusItem with variableLength:

• Folded: length = screenWidth + 500 — occupies the full width, pushing all other icons off the right edge of the screen
• Expanded: length = NSStatusItem.variableLength — system calculates natural width, all icons visible

autosaveName lets the system remember the item's position across restarts.

Requirements

• macOS 12.0 (Monterey) or later
• No special permissions required

Tech Stack

• Swift + AppKit
• NSStatusItem with variableLength
• NSEvent global monitor for auto-collapse
• XcodeGen for project generation