Guide
The best free Mac menu bar apps
Seven small, free apps that each do one job from the menu bar, plus what to do when you run out of room for them.
Updated October 19, 2026
A good menu bar app answers a question at a glance and stays out of the way the rest of the time. The seven below are free, need no account, and run on macOS 14 or later. One thing to know up front: they’re all made by the same person who makes Coat Check. Where a well-known app from someone else does the same job, it’s listed too, so you can pick for yourself.
See what’s using your Mac: Spare
Spare shows CPU and memory use in the menu bar, grouped by app, by project, and by AI coding agent, and tells you what’s safe to close. It’s free and open source under the MIT license. Also good: Stats, a free open-source system monitor, or Activity Monitor, which is built in.
Keep your Mac awake: Midnight Oil
Midnight Oil keeps your Mac awake for an hour, until a set time, or while a task runs, so long jobs and AI agents like Claude Code and Codex can finish overnight. It stops at a low battery so your MacBook doesn’t run flat. Also good: Amphetamine, free on the Mac App Store.
Know before your disk fills up: Disk Forecast
Disk Forecast shows your free space and forecasts when the disk will be full, explains what “System Data” is made of, and moves what you clean up to the Trash so you can undo it.
Find out why the internet is slow: WiFi or ISP
WiFi or ISP times your router and the wider internet at the same moment, so it can tell whether slow internet is your Wi-Fi or your provider. It also logs drops you can show your ISP.
Check your camera and mic before a call: Green Room
Green Room checks your camera, microphone, and speakers in one click and warns you when AirPods have taken over your audio or your USB mic isn’t plugged in.
Keep what you copied: On Hand
On Hand is a clipboard manager. Search and reuse the text, links, and images you’ve copied, and pin the ones you reuse. Everything stays on your Mac. It’s free and open source under the MIT license. Also good: Maccy, a free open-source clipboard manager.
Make room for all of them: Coat Check
Every app you add takes a spot in the menu bar, and on a MacBook with a notch the spots run out fast. When they do, macOS doesn’t warn you. Icons that don’t fit to the right of the notch just don’t appear. Here’s how the notch hides them.
Coat Check adds a hanger to the menu bar. Click it to see every menu bar icon, with the ones macOS had no room for listed first, and open any of them, including their own menus. It doesn’t move or rearrange anything. It’s free and open source under the MIT license. If you’d rather hide and rearrange icons yourself, compare it with Bartender, Ice, and the others.
How to choose a menu bar app
- It should answer a question at a glance. If you have to open it to learn anything, it might belong in the Dock instead.
- Check what it asks for. A clipboard manager needs to read what you copy; a disk app needs to see your files. Be wary of permissions an app’s job doesn’t explain.
- Count your spots. On a MacBook with a notch, icons only fit to its right, and how many fit depends on the screen size and how wide each icon is. Past that, you need a way to reach the rest.