Inside EjectBox: Eject Any Drive from the Mac Menu Bar
EjectBox is a small Mac utility from 1dot1 that lives behind an eject icon in the menu bar. Ejecting a drive on a Mac usually means finding it first: in the Finder sidebar, on a desktop hidden behind full-screen apps, or not at all when the icon has been turned off. EjectBox keeps every ejectable volume in one list. This teardown walks through the app screen by screen and explains the decisions behind each part.
One list, one click
Clicking the icon opens a panel under the menu bar with one row per volume. Each row shows an icon for the kind of volume, its name, the format and capacity, a bar for how full it is, and an eject button. Clicking a name reveals the volume in Finder, and Eject All sits at the bottom.
The panel behaves like a menu. It never appears in the Dock or the app switcher and closes when the pointer clicks elsewhere, so ejecting a drive takes two clicks from anywhere on the Mac.
Every volume, grouped by drive
EjectBox lists anything that can be ejected or unmounted: external drives, USB sticks, SD cards, optical discs, disk images, network shares and Time Machine disks. The startup disk and the hidden system volumes macOS creates are never shown, and the list updates the moment something is mounted, unmounted or renamed.
Many drives hold more than one volume. EjectBox traces each volume back to its physical device and groups them together, with an Eject Disk button for the whole drive. Ejecting one partition of a drive while another stays mounted rarely makes sense, and the grouping makes that obvious.
Eject All, in one click
Eject All works through every listed device in turn, with a spinner on each row while it is being ejected and a count in the footer. Disk images and network shares are unmounted; physical drives are unmounted and then ejected, so they are ready to unplug. It is the last thing to press before closing a laptop and putting it in a bag.
See what is holding on
The most frustrating message on a Mac is a disk that could not be ejected because it is in use, with no clue as to what is using it. When a volume is busy, EjectBox asks macOS which processes have files open on it and names them in the panel, so the right app can be closed instead of guessing.
Force Eject is available when there is no other way, but it asks for a second click and warns that unsaved changes may be lost. Forcing a drive off should always be a deliberate choice.
Always one click away
In the menu bar, EjectBox shows an eject icon and the number of mounted volumes, which doubles as a quick check that a drive has mounted or finally let go. The count can be hidden. A right-click opens a short menu with one entry per device and Eject All, for ejecting without opening the panel at all.
Know when it is safe
Once a drive has been ejected, a notification says it can be removed, naming the drive and how many volumes were on it. The banner is the signal to pull the cable, and it can be switched off in the options menu for anyone who prefers silence. macOS asks once whether EjectBox may show notifications, and that is the only permission it needs.
Built in black and white
Like the other 1dot1 Mac apps, EjectBox is greyscale in light and dark mode. The icon is the familiar eject symbol in black on a white tile, and the menu bar icon repeats it. It is a universal app for Apple silicon and Intel Macs, runs on macOS 13 Ventura or later, never opens files on the drives it lists and never connects to the internet.
Get EjectBox
EjectBox is available on 1dot1 as a single download, with a README and the licence inside the zip.