Get the blank icons. You’ll need this ZIP to make the Dropbox icon vanish.
Get the originals so you can undo things. This is a copy of the icons you are about to overwrite.
The idea is simple. Replace the icons that Dropbox uses in the menu bar with some blank images. The video explains exactly how to do it.
Oh, and I should mention that this little video was pretty much created for minimalmac.com. I actually like to keep my Dropbox icon visible ;)
12 Comments
Surprisingly, I did this last year. I never really released it to the net though. Guess I should have.
I think I assumed others would have figured it out also.
:)
Yeah, I’m not exactly breaking new ground with this. But some people just wouldn’t want to dig around their app package. And having the replacement images pre-made and pre-named will make it easier for people who want to do this as simply and easily as possible.
Erik
I actually submitted the same exact method to minimalmac but you outdid me with the video. Very well done.
People should note this can be done for any program, just replace the relevant icons to transparent pngs. I did this for typinator before they had a hide menu icon option.
Great video!
Thanks Lisa. Screenflow is fun :)
Thanks for the tip. I had a reservation of replacing all of the icons as I would no longer know the status or if there was a problem.
I only replaced the idle.png and logo.png files and now only see an icon if there is a problem or when files are being updated.
Great post! That has been driving me nuts forever.
I actually went ahead and did the same thing for all the other apps in my menu bar. A whole lot less clutter, but still all the same function.
Cheers
Erik-
I’m curious as to whether or not this adjustment in the menu bar has been tried within the new Snow Leopard? I know that people changing menu bar options (ie. color of the menu Apple icon) inside Leopard have had no problems, but the same modifications in Snow Leopard rendered their computers desktop unusable. Thoughts?
Brad,
I made this screencast on Snow Leopard and it worked fine.
Erik
Thanks Erik for the tutorial. I also like to keep my Dropbox icon in the menu bar, but with your tutorial, I succeed to change some of the other icons so I have now a nicer and cleaner system menu bar.
Here’s my post about how to keep your OS X menu bar nice and clean.
The problem with this solution is that now everytime i turn dropbox on, it ask me if i allow it to conect…is there some fix to this?
I’ve used a similar technique in the past, except instead of regular full-size, err, full-width icons… I kept the height of the png the same, but made the width just a couple px wide. this way, if an app loads in the menu bar before another that I do want to keep, it won’t show a space between them where the “hidden” one is ghosted with a clear png. I’m not sure if it works as well now, as it has been a couple years since I tried it, but it made for a much less busy menu bar… of course, when I did it that way, I was assuming I had access to that app’s prefs and other input via other methods; dropbox does not let you, so the icon up there is necessary to at least be wide enough to catch with a mouse.
thanks a lot, i also replaced it since it can get a little crowdy and it’s really annoying to not be able to move nor remove that icon, i just replaced the logo and the idle png’s so i can find out if something is wrong or if it actually works
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[...] Removed / Hid icons from the Menu BarI used to have a have a TON of icons in the menu bar. Then the thought occurred to me, “Why do I have so much clutter and distractions?” So I took a look at what I actually needed and dispensed with the rest. The only icon I’m undecided about at this time is the DropBox icon. There’s no way to remove the icon within the app itself, but there is a method to hide the icon. [...]
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