Every version

Release notes

Every version of Drop Down, newest first. The app checks for updates once a day and offers each one; nothing is installed without asking.

November 4, 2026Early Access

0.9.6 (8)

Early Access 6

Make the panel your own: with Drop Down Pro, give it a theme, rename apps and choose their icons. You can now hide some of Apple’s own menu bar items too, on macOS 15 (from 15.6), 26 (from 26.6) and 27 (most from 27.2). Drop Down also stops responding less often, and when it does, it notes where it got stuck for the diagnostics report.

Download for Mac

New

With Drop Down Pro, the panel can have a theme: Frost, Graphite, Drop Down or Custom, and on macOS 26 and 27 also Liquid Glass. Custom takes your own colours, as a gradient of up to three or a blend of up to five, and sets how much glass shows. Choose one in Settings › Panel, which previews it over your wallpaper and warns when text may be hard to read. Without Pro the panel keeps the System look, and your theme is kept for later.
With Pro, you can rename an app with Rename… in its right-click menu in the panel. The name is used only in the panel.
With Pro, an app can have an icon of your choice in the panel: a symbol, an emoji, a picture of your own (PNG, JPEG, HEIC, TIFF or PDF) or its app icon. Use Change Icon… in its right-click menu, or the pencil beside it in Settings › Menu Bar Items.
On macOS 15 (from 15.6) and 26 (from 26.6), Settings › Menu Bar Items has a new System Items section. Turn off Sound, Display, Screen Mirroring, Focus, Now Playing, Fast User Switching or Spotlight, and the item moves to the panel, like an app’s icon, and opens from there. It is free. The clock and Control Center always stay in the menu bar.
On macOS 27, Settings › Menu Bar Items has a System Items section too. Sound, Display, Screen Mirroring, Spotlight, Wi‑Fi, Battery and Bluetooth can go to the panel, but only while Drop Down also hides an app; at other times they stay in the menu bar. Sound, Display, Screen Mirroring and Bluetooth need macOS 27.2. It is free.
On macOS 27, Focus, Now Playing and Fast User Switching, which macOS hides while Drop Down hides icons, show in the panel, dimmed, and open from there. Opening one shows the hidden icons for about a second. To leave them out, turn off Show system items that macOS hides in Settings › Panel, or choose Don’t Show in Panel in an item’s right-click menu.
When Drop Down stops responding for more than two seconds, it now notes when and where it got stuck. The diagnostics report in Settings › About shows the last five notes. They name none of your apps or windows, and they stay on your Mac.
The panel and Settings show Setapp’s own menu bar icon, taken from Setapp itself, wherever Drop Down has no picture of it yet. It shows where the real icons show: with Screen Recording allowed, and in the panel with menu bar icons chosen.

Improvements

While an update installs, every hidden icon shows and Drop Down pauses its work on the menu bar until the update restarts it. If the update has not restarted Drop Down after a minute, or stops, hiding goes on by itself, and Resume ends the pause sooner.
Setapp’s menu bar helper is called Setapp in the panel and in Settings, and Open Setapp in its right-click menu opens the Setapp app.
On macOS 27, Settings › Menu Bar Items explains apps outside the Applications folder with an info sign instead of a warning, worded for whether the app is hidden. For an app in the Applications folder of your home folder, it says how to keep it in the menu bar.
On macOS 27, Settings says which of Apple’s own items macOS hides while Drop Down hides icons. Settings › Safety names Live Activities and items such as Focus, Now Playing and Fast User Switching, and the System Items section of Settings › Menu Bar Items marks those items.
On macOS 27, Refresh Icons now reaches every hidden app in the Applications folder. Pictures lose the faint streaks that spoiled some, and Drop Down refuses one with the wallpaper showing through.
Dimmed icons and secondary text in the panel are easier to read, in Basic too.
On every system, Drop Down keeps no picture of Fast User Switching’s item, which can show your name, and deletes any it had.

Fixes

Several things could make Drop Down stop responding for a moment: reading its permissions, watching whether a microphone or camera is in use, asking macOS about running apps, and checking whether it opens at login. Drop Down now does most of this in the background. On macOS 15 and 26, while icons are hidden, a stall over two seconds still makes Drop Down quit, which brings every hidden icon back until you open it again.
On macOS 26, and on macOS 15 with one display, every hidden icon could show for a moment right after Drop Down moved icons straight to their side of the menu bar. That no longer happens.
On macOS 26, opening a hidden icon’s secondary menu from the panel, with ⌥-click or Open Secondary Menu, could click the chevron instead of the icon. It now clicks the icon.
On macOS 26, a popover opened from the panel could appear at the left edge of the display instead of under its icon. It now opens under the icon.
On a light panel, a mostly white icon picture with a shadow or a dark patch could all but disappear. It now keeps a dark plate behind it.
On macOS 27, a panel that fits without scrolling could leave its top row blank. Every row now shows.
On macOS 27.2, clicking the clock while icons are hidden, or pressing your Notification Center shortcut at any time, opened Notification Center and closed it again at once. It now stays open.
On macOS 27.2, with “Open its menu under Drop Down” chosen in Settings › General, some hidden icons, such as Raycast’s, showed in the menu bar every time you opened them. Their menus open under Drop Down again. After this update, Drop Down tries once more, for each app, to open its menu without showing its icon; apps that answer only a click still show it.
On macOS 27, hidden apps in the Applications folder could go missing from the panel right after Drop Down started, after a hidden app restarted, or after you hid an app, until you paused hiding. They now keep their cells, with their saved pictures, and open from there.
On macOS 27, macOS does not show an icon that is turned off in System Settings › Menu Bar, even when every icon is shown. A click on such an icon in the panel showed every hidden icon for seconds and then failed. Now the hidden icons show once, briefly, and for Setapp’s icon Drop Down opens the Setapp app instead and says so; for any other app, it says why the menu cannot open. Drop Down remembers this, so later clicks do not show the hidden icons. Open Menu in the icon’s right-click menu tries the menu again, and Forget Learned Ways to Open Items in Settings › Safety clears what it remembers.
On macOS 27, with Setapp set to open its own app when you click its menu bar icon, the hidden icons stayed in the menu bar for several seconds after a click on it in the panel. They now go back as soon as the Setapp app answers.

Good to know

System items can be hidden from 15.6 on macOS 15 and from 26.6 on macOS 26, where Wi‑Fi, Battery, Bluetooth, Siri, the clock and Control Center stay in the menu bar. On macOS 27, Sound, Display, Screen Mirroring, Spotlight, Wi‑Fi, Battery and Bluetooth can be hidden only while Drop Down also hides an app; at other times they stay in the menu bar. Sound, Display, Screen Mirroring and Bluetooth need macOS 27.2. The clock and Control Center always stay.
On macOS 27, a system item’s menu opens at the item’s own place in the menu bar, not under Drop Down.
On macOS 15 and 26, if macOS removes a system item just after Drop Down moved it, Settings › Menu Bar Items says so, and the system items you hid return to the menu bar until that item is back.
On macOS 27, while icons are hidden, macOS also hides Live Activities, such as a match score or a delivery. They come back when you show every icon, when no hidden app is running, or when you quit Drop Down.
On macOS 27, Focus, Now Playing and Fast User Switching also disappear while icons are hidden, and Drop Down cannot keep them or hide them by choice. They show in the panel, dimmed, unless you turn that off, and opening one shows the hidden icons for about a second. They come back the same way as Live Activities.
On macOS 27, the menu of an app outside the Applications folder whose icon macOS does not show, even with every icon shown, cannot open from the panel. For Setapp, Drop Down opens the Setapp app instead.
When an update installs, your hidden icons show in the menu bar from the moment it starts until Drop Down is back. This begins with the update after 0.9.6: updating to 0.9.6 works as before.

October 18, 2026Early Access

0.9.5 (7)

Early Access 5

On macOS 27, clicking the clock opens Notification Center again while icons are hidden, and a shortcut you choose can open it too. Apple’s own icons, such as Spotlight’s on macOS 27, are no longer hidden when they first appear.

New

On macOS 27, you can choose a shortcut in Settings › Shortcuts that opens and closes Notification Center, also while icons are hidden, when Globe+N does not. There is none until you choose one. It is free.

Fixes

On macOS 27, clicking the clock opens Notification Center again while icons are hidden. The hidden icons show for a moment when it opens, and can when it closes; Globe+N still does not work while icons are hidden.
With new menu bar icons set to “Put it in Drop Down” in Settings › General, Apple’s own icons were hidden too when they first appeared, such as Spotlight’s on macOS 27 when you turned it on. They now always show; you can still hide one in Settings › Menu Bar Items.
On macOS 27, when the menu bar was too crowded for every icon, the panel could show the « button or part of a neighboring icon in place of a hidden app’s icon. Drop Down no longer takes a picture of an icon the menu bar has no room for.

Good to know

On macOS 27, while icons are hidden, opening Notification Center from the clock or from your shortcut shows the hidden icons for a moment, and so can closing it. The Globe+N shortcut does not open it while icons are hidden.

October 17, 2026Early Access

0.9.4 (6)

Early Access 4

Drop Down now shows when a hidden app has a notification, on macOS 15, 26 and 27: a dot on the chevron in Basic, and with Pro a number, your own colour and more. Hidden icons open their menus beside the chevron, and Drop Down moves icons without showing the other hidden icons on macOS 26, and on macOS 15 with one display.

New

Notification signs for hidden apps on macOS 15, 26 and 27, set up in the new Settings › Notifications. Drop Down reads the badge each hidden app puts on its Dock icon. An app with no Dock icon, or one not allowed to badge its icon in System Settings › Notifications, gets no sign. A Notification Center banner only makes Drop Down read the badges at once. It never reads what a banner says.
Free in Basic: a dot on the chevron while a hidden app has a notification, and the chevron’s tooltip names the apps. You can show the dot only briefly after a new notification, and turn an app’s notifications off in Settings or in its right-click menu in the panel.
With Drop Down Pro, a number can show in place of the chevron, in colour or in the menu bar’s colour, counting apps or notifications. The icon of the app whose notification came last can take its place instead. Pick your own colour, and have the dot breathe or turn green on a new notification. Pro also adds dots on the panel’s icons and, per app, its icon in the menu bar for a while after a new notification.
With Pro, on macOS 15 and 26, an app’s icon “in the menu bar for a while” is its picture from the panel, shown beside the chevron in place of the real icon. Click it to open the app’s menu.
Pausing reactions, in the chevron’s menu or in Settings › Notifications, stops Pro’s reactions to a new notification: the dot’s effect and the showing of app icons in the menu bar.
While a display is mirrored, as on a projector, no hidden app’s icon shows in the menu bar for a notification, and where the chevron would show an app’s icon, it shows a dot. Settings › Notifications can turn this off.
On macOS 27, while the panel is open, a hidden app in the Applications folder whose notifications changed after its picture was taken (one came, or they were cleared) shows in the menu bar for about a second, so its cell gets a fresh picture. It is free, and needs Screen Recording and the panel set to show menu bar icons.
On macOS 27, Settings › General › “When you open a hidden icon” offers two ways. “Open its menu under Drop Down”, the default, shows the app’s icon beside the chevron for a moment the first time you open it; after that, its menu opens there without the icon. “Show its icon and open its menu there” shows the icon in the menu bar every time, and its menu opens under it.

Improvements

On macOS 26, and on macOS 15 with one display, opening a hidden icon from the panel moves only that icon beside the chevron and opens its menu there. The other hidden icons stay hidden, and the icon goes back when the menu closes. On macOS 15 with more than one display, the icon moves beside the chevron too, but the pointer jumps for a moment and the other hidden icons may show briefly.
On macOS 26, and on macOS 15 with one display, hiding or showing an app moves its icons straight to their side of the menu bar, without showing the other hidden icons. Rarely, an icon that cannot be moved straight moves as before: the pointer jumps to the menu bar and back and the hidden icons show for a moment. On macOS 15 with more than one display, hiding and showing work as before.

Fixes

On macOS 27, the menu of a hidden icon opened from the panel could open far left of the chevron after Show All or after Drop Down restarted. It now opens beside the chevron.
On macOS 15 and 26, after Drop Down moved icons, the system could keep ⌘ held down: your clicks were ⌘-clicks until you pressed a modifier key, and a click on the chevron did not open the panel.
“Pause hiding while the microphone or camera is in use” in Settings › Safety missed a microphone that was not the default input, such as a headset on a call. It now watches every microphone. A headset that only plays sound no longer counts as a microphone in use.

Good to know

On macOS 26, and on macOS 15 with one display, when you hide or show an app, Drop Down moves its icons straight to their side of the menu bar. Rarely, when one cannot be moved straight, the pointer jumps to the menu bar and back and the hidden icons show for a moment.
On macOS 26, and on macOS 15 with one display, opening a hidden icon from the panel moves it beside the chevron until its menu closes. Rarely, when it cannot be moved straight there, the other hidden icons show briefly; when it cannot be moved at all, they all show until the menu closes.
On macOS 15 with more than one display, when you hide or show an app, Drop Down moves its icons, and the pointer jumps to the menu bar and back for a moment. Showing an app, and on some displays hiding one, also shows the hidden icons for a moment.
On macOS 15 with more than one display, opening a hidden icon from the panel moves it beside the chevron until its menu closes, and the pointer jumps for a moment. The other hidden icons may show briefly; when the icon cannot be moved, they all show until the menu closes.
On macOS 15 and 26, an app that shows a menu bar icon for the first time can stay hidden for a few seconds until Drop Down moves its icon.
On macOS 27, each picture taken for a hidden app while the panel is open lights the screen-recording indicator for a moment.

October 12, 2026Early Access

0.9.3 (5)

Early Access 3

Drop Down now runs on macOS 15 and macOS 26 as well as macOS 27, on Macs with Apple silicon, with the same options and the same license key on all three. On 15 and 26 it hides icons by moving them off the screen; on macOS 27 hiding works as before.

New

On macOS 15 and 26, hidden icons wait off the screen, beyond an invisible separator that Drop Down keeps in the menu bar. Hiding or showing an app moves its icons across the separator.
On macOS 15 and 26, Show All marks where hiding begins with ‖. Hold ⌘ and drag icons across it to choose what hides: icons left of it are hidden when you resume, and the app’s switch in Settings follows.
On macOS 15 and 26, a click on a hidden icon in the panel opens that app’s menu, as on macOS 27.
Real icons in the panel on macOS 15 and 26 too, with Screen Recording. On macOS 26 an icon’s picture is taken while it is visible: before it hides, while you open it, or with Refresh Icons; until then the panel shows its app’s icon. On macOS 15, Refresh Icons takes fresh pictures without showing the icons.
On macOS 15 and 26, Drop Down works from any folder, and the setup does not ask to move it, though a copy opened straight from the disk image cannot update itself. On macOS 27 it still has to run from the Applications folder.
On macOS 15 and 26, hiding also pauses while Dozer or Vanilla runs, as it does for the other menu bar managers Drop Down recognises.

Good to know

On macOS 15 the panel has that system’s translucent look; the glass look needs macOS 26 or later.
On macOS 15 and 26, when you hide or show an app, Drop Down moves its icons, and the pointer jumps to the menu bar and back for a moment. Showing an app, and on some displays hiding one, also shows the hidden icons for a moment.
On macOS 15 and 26, opening a hidden icon from the panel shows all hidden icons until its menu closes.
On macOS 15 and 26, an app that shows a menu bar icon for the first time can stay hidden for a few seconds until Drop Down moves its icon.
Drop Down is built for Apple silicon only, so Intel Macs cannot run it, even with macOS 15 or 26.

October 2, 2026Early Access

0.9.2 (4)

Early Access 2

Choose how early your updates arrive, and see what each update brings before you install it.

New

Settings › About lets you choose an update channel: Stable, the default, brings only stable versions; the other channel brings each new version as soon as it is ready, stable ones included.

Improvements

The update window shows what the new version brings, and links to every release’s notes.

October 1, 2026Early Access

0.9.1 (3)

Early Access 1

The first Early Access release. Choose the menu bar apps you rarely need; their icons leave the menu bar and wait in a small glass panel under one chevron. Basic is free; Drop Down Pro adds the panel options marked Pro.

New

Hide menu bar icons app by app: turn off “Show in menu bar” in the setup or in Settings › Menu Bar Items, and the app’s icons move to the panel.
The panel opens under the chevron when you click it or press ⌃⌥⌘D. Click an icon to open that app’s own menu; ⌥‑click opens its secondary menu.
Hidden icons open in one click. Most apps open while their icon stays hidden; for the few that only answer a real click, Drop Down shows the icon, clicks it and puts the pointer back. Settings › General can switch the click off, and then the icon is shown for you to click.
A cell’s right-click menu opens the app’s menus, shows the icon in the menu bar again, opens the app, shows it in Finder or quits it (hold ⌥ to force quit).
Drag an icon out of the panel onto the menu bar to show it there again.
With Screen Recording allowed, the panel shows each icon as it looks in your menu bar; without it, it shows app icons. Refresh Icons in Settings takes fresh pictures.
Panel layouts: an automatic grid or a fixed one from 3 × 3 to 6 × 6 (any size up to 8 × 8), scrolling down or sideways, or pages with dots; small, medium or large icons; and a list view with names.
Order the panel alphabetically, in menu bar order, or your own way: drag icons in the panel, use ⌥ with the arrow keys, or sort the list in Settings › Panel.
Type to filter the open panel; Return opens the best match.
The + button at the end of the grid adds an app from the panel, with a picker that shows each app’s icon.
Record your own panel shortcut in Settings › Shortcuts. Shortcuts macOS already uses are refused, and ⌃⌥⌘D takes over if yours stops working.
Drop Down Pro, a one-time purchase, unlocks the panel options marked Pro: fixed grid sizes, scrolling sideways and pages, icon sizes, the list view, type to filter, a custom order and a custom panel shortcut. Activate your license key in Settings › License, which also checks the license, frees this Mac for another and links to Polar’s customer portal. Without Pro, your Pro choices are kept and the panel shows its Basic layout.
Apps that run from outside the Applications folder can go into the panel too.
When an app shows a menu bar icon for the first time, it stays in the menu bar, or goes straight into Drop Down if you choose that in Settings › General.
Pick the menu bar icon in Settings › General: an arrow or stacked arrows, in the menu bar’s own colour or in colour, two-tone stacked arrows, or the system chevron. It turns upside down while the panel is open.
Safety: ⌃⌥⌘H shows every icon and pauses hiding until you resume it; quitting brings every icon back; hold ⌥ at launch for safe mode; hiding pauses while another menu bar manager runs, and optionally while the microphone or a camera is in use.
Settings › About saves a diagnostics report where you choose, and Send Feedback opens the feedback board.
Updates arrive through Sparkle with a daily check, and are never installed without asking.
A short setup moves Drop Down to Applications, asks for Accessibility and, optionally, Screen Recording, and lets you choose the first apps. Drop Down can start at login.
English and Turkish.

Good to know

macOS hides an app’s menu bar icons together: one app, one switch.
Apps that run from outside the Applications folder stay hidden whenever hiding is on, even the ones you choose to show.
While icons are hidden, the Globe+N shortcut for Notification Center does not work.
When an update installs, Drop Down quits and starts again, and your hidden icons show in the menu bar until it is back.

Requires a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later. Something you want in the next entry? Say so on the feedback board.