Expand on hover
The bar collapses to a thin line when idle. Move the pointer near it to expand. Appearance and animation settings are adjustable.
TideBar · Free and open source
A macOS taskbar that collapses to a line.
Move the pointer near the bottom of your screen to launch apps, switch windows, or open pinned files and folders. Move away and the bar collapses.
Features
Manage apps, windows, files, and folders.
Switch windows
Hold or Option-click an app to select a window by title, including minimized windows. Filled dots mean non-minimized; hollow dots mean minimized.
Pin apps and files
Pin apps, files, and folders, then drag to reorder them. Hold a folder to list recently modified items, or create an app collection for grouped launch shortcuts.
Notification badges
App badges are read from the system Dock. New badges trigger a line animation; expanding the bar stops it without marking messages as read.
In fullscreen apps the line opens on a click by default; hover-to-open and fully hidden modes are in Settings.
Permissions and privacy
Window management uses Accessibility access.
Accessibility access lets TideBar read window titles and states, focus and restore windows, detect fullscreen apps, and read Dock badges. File access follows macOS access controls.
No Screen Recording permission No window thumbnails No usage analytics or account
Packaged builds use Sparkle to check GitHub Releases for updates. Turn off automatic checks in Settings → About.
macOS 14 or later
Install TideBar.
Extract the release ZIP and move TideBar.app to Applications. Builds are not notarized by Apple; if macOS blocks the app, use Open Anyway in System Settings → Privacy & Security after trying to launch it.
The setup guide asks for Accessibility access and Dock takeover. Takeover saves and changes your Dock settings, then restarts the Dock to hide it. The taskbar appears while takeover is enabled; normal quit restores the saved settings.
Setup, recovery, and usage instructionsSource and feedback
Build from source or report an issue.
TideBar is written in Swift and released under the MIT License. Build it on macOS with Swift 6.2 or later. For bug reports, include your macOS version, TideBar version, and steps to reproduce.