Every app wants a spot in your menu bar. Install a browser, a sync client, a screenshot tool, a VPN, and a couple of dev utilities, and you'll have a dozen icons crammed into a few inches of screen. On a MacBook with a notch, that space is even tighter — icons can end up hidden entirely behind the camera housing, where you can't see or click them at all. Here's a practical, repeatable workflow for fixing that with Lounge.

Step 1: Install Lounge and grant Accessibility permission

Download Lounge and open it. macOS will prompt you to grant Accessibility permission — this is required because Lounge repositions menu bar items, which macOS treats as an accessibility-level operation. Approve it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility. Without this permission, Lounge can't move the hidden status item that makes hiding and revealing icons possible, so it's worth double-checking the toggle is on if sorting doesn't seem to work. For a full walkthrough of this step and everything after it, see the getting started guide.

Step 2: Audit your current menu bar

Before you start dragging icons around, take stock of what's actually there. Most Mac users are surprised by how many icons have accumulated — apps installed months ago, one-off utilities used once and never removed, background agents that don't need to be visible at all. A quick mental sort helps:

Daily-glance icons — Wi-Fi, battery, volume, input source, Bluetooth
Occasional-use icons — VPN clients, cloud sync status, screen recording tools
Rarely or never touched — anything you can't immediately explain the purpose of

That third bucket is usually the largest, and it's exactly what Lounge's hidden section is for.

Step 3: Sort icons into visible and hidden sections

Lounge splits your menu bar into two sections separated by a divider marker. Hold ⌘ and drag any icon across the divider to move it:

Keep icons you check constantly (Wi-Fi, battery, volume) in the visible section.
Move icons you rarely need (rarely-used utilities, background sync tools, one-off menu bar apps) into the hidden section.

Work through your menu bar left to right rather than trying to plan the whole layout up front — it's faster to make quick calls icon-by-icon than to decide everything in advance, and you can always move something back later.

Step 4: Set your shortcut

Press ⌘⇧L to instantly toggle the hidden section open or closed from anywhere — no need to move your mouse to the corner of the screen. This is the fastest way to check something in the hidden section mid-task: hit the shortcut, glance at the icon, hit it again to close. You can remap this shortcut in Lounge's preferences panel if ⌘⇧L conflicts with another app.

Step 5: Use the notch-aware panel for quick access

If you're on a notched MacBook, hover near the notch instead of using the shortcut. Lounge reveals a panel with both your visible and hidden icons laid out clearly, so you never lose track of what's hidden — useful if you'd rather point and glance than remember a key combo.

Step 6: Revisit your setup periodically

As you install and uninstall menu bar apps, new icons will land in the visible section by default. Spend thirty seconds every few weeks re-sorting anything new — Lounge remembers your layout automatically, so this is a one-time move per icon, not a recurring chore. A good trigger is any time you notice your menu bar looking crowded again: that's usually a sign a few new icons have landed since your last pass.

Bonus: clean up your clipboard too

Menu bar clutter and clipboard clutter tend to go together — both are small utility problems that compound over weeks of use. Lounge's built-in clipboard history keeps recently copied snippets searchable from the menu bar, so you don't need a separate clipboard manager adding yet another icon to the row you just cleaned up.

How to Declutter Your macOS Menu Bar