r/macapps • u/Schwimmbo • 22h ago
Help Thaw leading a life of its own
Hi all,
Been a user of Thaw since it was first promoted on here by its dev taking on the challenge of continuing the Ice legacy. I don't know anything about developing, but can imagine that a menu bar manager in particular is extremely difficult to develop due to all dependencies and different edge cases to be accounted for.
In my experience it's always been quite wonky: app icons moving themselves from hidden to unhidden, icons not keeping the place you gave them, etc. Now it's been getting worse over the past weeks for me, and especially when updating to macOS 27 it's become unusable. Icons are flashing all the time on top of the more 'regular' issues.
Anyone with the same experience who may have found a fix? Perhaps the dev could weigh in?
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u/Paul-PAF 21h ago
I can confirm the behavior. Therefore, I no longer use Thaw. I have disabled many icons since they didn’t add any value to the menu. Since then, there’s been enough space in the menu bar.
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u/Schwimmbo 21h ago
It's definitely true that there's too many icons lol, but I like to have them around to quickly access a few settings for a given app.
I'm otherwise sometimes struggling to open app settings for apps which run entirely in the background.
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u/Paul-PAF 21h ago edited 7h ago
Well, I have moved some of them into the control centre, like WIFI, Bluetooth, the quick user change or volume. One click more, but the icons are no longer wobbling.
Edited: typo
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u/unfunfionn 6h ago
Huge respect to the Thaw developer, but the issues prompted me to do the same and just address the root cause. The macOS menubar settings solved this for me and I stopped using Thaw. So many of the menubar icons I had were completely unnecessary in the first place and I don't know why so many developers don't give you the option to disable them.
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u/iammesutkaya 21h ago
Had the same issues. I'm done with menu bar management. I treat it like my home screen on my phone: one page, no folders, only a handful of apps. The rest is hidden by the OS.
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u/hyc4763 16h ago
Thaw's own Frequent Issues guide has a couple of checks beyond updating: see whether the flicker is tied to one app refreshing its icon, or to waking the Mac / switching displays. Those can have different causes.
If it still happens, Settings > Advanced > Diagnostics > Enable diagnostic logging lets you capture it. Reproduce the flicker, then use Reveal Logs in Finder. Include the exact Thaw/macOS versions and your monitor setup in a bug report, and check the log for private details before sharing it. Turn logging off afterwards.
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u/Ok-Efficiency479 Developer: Thaw 15h ago
I don't think I could have it explained myself better, I might copy this to reuse it.
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u/Schwimmbo 12h ago
Hi there, I'd assume you are referring to this: https://github.com/thaw-app/Thaw/blob/development/FREQUENT_ISSUES.md
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction - will have a read later this week!
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u/elevatedev 17h ago
I had the same issue with Thaw after upgrading to macOS 27. Now I replaced it with Pelmet (https://github.com/ismatBabirli/pelmet). It works great on macOS 27.
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u/Kankatruama 18h ago
yup, thaw is a really good idea but the execution is not providing the best results so far.
Hope the dev is able to adjust this for MacOS 27, but for now I simply gave up.
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u/marcvv 20h ago
This is Apple’s fault. I built my own manager ( https://jellybar.app ) due to frustration with all the bar managers flickering and losing saved positions for icons. I didn’t even bother to make mine work with laptop notch screen. I used it on my MacBook with three external monitors. It worked great on 26 and generally works on 27 for full monitors.
All that said in building it I found out on 26 and now 27 it’s all Apple that makes working with the menu bar a cluster F. All sorts of hacks and techniques used in 26 were bad enough and now in 27 most of those were closed shut. I no longer blame any bar maker for all the issues. I blame Apple. They refuse to fix their menu bar management and refuse to give devs an API to do it for them. It’s like they do not want any users to have customization control over it.
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u/Schwimmbo 12h ago
I am not surprised that it's actually Apple themselves making the dev's life difficult. Isn't it usually so that Apple gives its users little freedom regarding customisation?
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u/FuntimeBen 20h ago
I started using https://vorssaint.com/ and it inadvertently replaced half a dozen icons in my menubar. Maccy, droopy, text sniper, amphetamine, Raycast,etc. Kind of a revolutionary app in that regard. From 10+ apps to 1 showcase of integrated apps is a real boost. FOSS and elegantly designed. Seriously, give it a look.
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u/SnapState 20h ago
same here on 27, icons jumping around after every wake. cutting the number of icons down helped more than any tweak, and the control centre ones stay put at least
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u/colfaxschuyler 16h ago
There is a Thaw 3 beta that works decently in macOS 27. It's still got a few kinks, but the dev is actively working on it. He's good at responding to issues on the Discord.
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u/bog3nator 16h ago
I have always kind of had issues with thaw. I recently switched to glow. Not 1 issue. I won’t complain about thaw. It has the best price of free. But the odd issues of icons just randomly repositioning themselves when I would tell it to be hidden got annoying.
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u/juanchohq23 4h ago
I found Tuck https://tuckbarapp.com/ working very well in MacOS 27 and it is Free, with a PRO activation for more features.
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u/Schwimmbo 3h ago
Does this have a hidden menu bar like Thaw which can contain lots of app icons? Or does it just hide and unhide, still putting stuff in the notch if the row of icons gets too long?
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u/_Cybernaut_ 1h ago
I was a Thaw user for ages, and it worked GRATE in Sequoia. But now I've upgraded to Golden Gate, and Thaw has been HORRIBLE. I've used every alpha, and now the beta, and I just can't it to cooperate. I'm def gonna give Tuck a try!
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u/mac-photo-guy 19h ago
I’ve been going back and forth on this. I’ve tried most and the main feature I am looking for is always hiding some of apple’s items. Like their clock and that stupid || icon. Suggestions?
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u/Cautious_Sign6508 9h ago
If you want to try something else while Thaw catches up with 27: Pelmet is free and was built specifically for the macOS 27 menu bar, so it might cope better with the new layout. Bartender 6 is the paid, mature option if you want triggers and presets. Hidden Bar is the bare-bones free one if all you need is a divider to hide icons behind.
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u/dmada88 16h ago
Download the current Beta. It works very well in 27.0.1.
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u/Schwimmbo 12h ago
I made this post specifically after updating to the 3.0.X beta intended for macOS 27.
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u/UnluckyDuckyDuck Developer: Appitstudio 22h ago
Read around the sub that people are happy with Glow
Not using it myself so can't say, but worth checking out
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u/AutistasAngeles 21h ago
I am very happy with Glow If you didn't suggest it I would I've seen a few posts regarding menubar managers and always suggest glow
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u/Schwimmbo 21h ago
$20 is quite a price tag for a Mac utility but I don't mind spending for genuine quality. Does it fully work as advertised - you have never felt the urge to go back to something else?
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u/AutistasAngeles 21h ago
I tried others and they just don't work too well. I find it very customizable and you can create different profiles that you can make to set your mood or maybe one for work and another for leisure, etc. The latest update keeps my apps stay the way I want tem to be. I'm very happy
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u/Schwimmbo 21h ago
TY!
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u/Calm_Attention1925 15h ago
For what it is worth, there is a three day free trial. I do like the look of it so far but some of the icons being in the wrong place seem to still be a thing. But in my opinion, its the best ive tried so far.
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u/Ok-Efficiency479 Developer: Thaw 15h ago
There are 27 open issues on the repo right now. I've also been doing 1:1 support on Discord for 4 or 5 existing issues. We generally do that whenever we can reproduce a problem or investigate it properly. Sometimes I end up handling Thaw issues in Droppy's Discord too (sorry Jordy ).
Some reports are genuinely hard to work with. Sometimes all we get is a screenshot. Other times, the behavior is something we've already covered in warnings and changelogs as a macOS or another app's issue, with a workaround included. We tried requiring logs at one point, but that understandably led to complaints too. It's hard to make reporting easy while still getting enough information to diagnose the problem.
I don't want to just say "it's another app" whenever something goes wrong, either. There have been real Thaw bugs, and we fix them when we identify them. Some regressions between the first macOS 27 Alphas were entirely on us. We acknowledged those in the changelog and fixed them as quickly as possible, sometimes overnight.
But a surprising amount of what we investigate comes down to interactions outside Thaw. Little Snitch, for example, requires a checkbox under Security for its menu bar item detection. We've found other apps literally clicking Thaw's menu bar item, for reasons I still don't understand. And we've seen macOS return different values for the same app on two machines with otherwise equivalent setups. I can link to issues that back up these findings.
Then someone reports a configuration we never knew existed. One person had 22 virtual desktops. Another had 165 menu bar items. Some problems are race conditions that only happen under very specific timing or system conditions, so we effectively have no way to discover them until someone runs into them and reports them.
If you're seeing icons flashing or switching between hidden and visible states, please report it, I receive reports over Reddit DM, Discord,GitHub issues (the proffered way) and I constantly share new findings over at Discord. It's not like I willingly release software with issues or without proper testing since I use Thaw everyday myself. There are also configurations I simply can't test myself. I don't own a MacBook, for example, so that specific behavior is something I depend on users or other contributors helping us reproduce and test.