[OS] Ice: The unmanaged menu bar manager that is still outperforming the competition
Hey everyone, for this week’s Silicon Thread feature, I took a deep dive into the menu bar ecosystem. There are a lot of new apps out there, but I wanted to talk about Ice. I know the community is aware that it’s no longer actively managed, but after extensive testing on macOS 26.4, it is still the slickest, most minimal option available. Here is the technical breakdown: The Good: The handling is incredibly easy, and the native macOS aesthetic is unmatched. Most importantly, the menu bar stability is flawless. The Glitches: You might experience a few minor app-level glitches when configuring settings, but the actual menu bar functionality never breaks. The Successor: I know a lot of people have moved to the actively managed fork, Thaw. I currently have Thaw in the testing lab and will be doing a full comparison soon, but I want to give Ice its flowers for remaining rock-solid despite the lack of updates. Transparency Note: I am an independent explorer. I have no affiliation with any developers and do not do paid promotions. My goal is just to document the real user experience. If you want to read my full breakdown of Ice (and see the community ratings), I’ve got the full review posted here: Silicon Thread Ice Review Ice Github Link: Ice Github Otherwise, let me know below—are you still running the original Ice, or have you already migrated to Thaw? or any other menu bar app? I appreciate the passion for newer tools like Thaw and Barbee! While Ice is discontinued, it still holds a place in many of our workflows due to its stability and history. Every app has a story, and I’m here to document mine. I respect the new builders, but I also respect the tools that got us here. Let’s keep the discussion focused on the software and help each other find the best setup for our specific needs. Thank You For Your coporation 💙 Hope you find what you are looking for!!!
Collected discussion
[Thaw app ](https://github.com/stonerl/Thaw). And a post on Thaw.
Ice has bugs that never get resolved. Switched to Thaw (thanks to this post) and all is working now.
Thaw is awesome. I found out about it from this Reddit and made the jump from ICE. Couldn’t be happier.
I love barbee personally. Floating widgets are great.
Me too. I switched from Ice to Barbee about a year ago. When the new MacOS will be released this summer (and is improved enough over Tahoe), I'm going to test whether Thaw is better than Barbee.
New Name, Ha will add it to review list. 👀 Thank you for sugegstion 💙
Unfortunately I had far worse problems with Ice than minor issues when configuring settings. It would crash regularly of its own accord and reliably whenever I interacted with it (I.e expanding it). It was unusable for me.
Good catch. I haven't hit those crashes on my M4 build, but that's exactly why I'm testing Thaw as the replacement. Thanks for the data point!
i expected Hidden Bar to be the most popular
It on my download list :) Will cover if i start using it after getting ICE its retirement 👀
ICE was fantastic. Migrated to Thaw.
Thank You for supporting ICE all this years :)
What happened to ice? Why is it abandoned now? I think I got it back when it was being supported not too long ago
The creator has not been activly maintaining the repo and since Tahoe came it somwhat buggy, some features are not working like dynamic bar, if you have too many app in menu bar ice hides some behid the notch but you cant access it. Trying to move to Thaw or exploring some more options currently. Thank you for supporting ICE all this time
u/Capable_Place119, just opened your site for the first time. Looks very promising and I would love to keep following it, but you don't seem to have RSS (or any other form of feed) on it. Think you could add that as an option, maybe?
Amazing Idea, and i am trying to add the endpoint, So stay Tuned will reply when its live, Thank you for the suppoert and suggestion 💙
Love the minimalism of Glow, new in the menu bar arena. https://macglow.app
Added to the review list, will review it over time and make a post about it, Stay Tuned Thnak You for supporting the community 💙
I used Bartender but gave up when it stopped working in Sequoia. I switched at that point to Ice and used it until it failed to work reliably once Tahoe came out. Then I switched to Barbee and I have been very very satisfied with that.
Will be trying out Thaw too. Though, so far haven’t had issues with Ice menu bar.
Sure is OG Ice, same Ice holds some of my personal attachment, still finding the perfect moment to retire it but can do, Will explore more and then finially say GoodBye to Ice 🥺 Thank You for supporting Ice 💙
Ice and Thaw were both broken for me as of yesterday. Barbee mostly works, so I bought it
Thanks, I have been using Ice for a while and it nails it down, but will try Thaw.
she's a keeper
I have been using ICE since I got my MacBook almost two years ago. For the most part, it seems stable, with no major issues except for 3-4 instances when something strange happened, and I had to restart ICE. This causes the icons to revert to the default sections or become disorganized, with some appearing in the visible section and others in the hidden section. Occasionally, the menu bar app icons don’t show up. One solution I found is to select General Settings, then go back to Menu Bar Layout, after which the icons appear. The frustrating part is that it often doesn’t remember the sections as configured. Sometimes it does, but when it doesn’t, I have to return to the settings and rearrange everything every time I start a menu bar app. I was interested in trying Thaw but was advised by the developer not to until I update to Tahoe.