When I hide items from the navigation panel, they’re gone until I go into my profile and unhide them.
Instead of hiding them completely, why not put them under an expandable ‘others’ row. Then the items you use less often are still available but the display is much less cluttered. (Better still, an option between others and hidden)
I think we would all benefit from these settings being global rather than per device too, but that’s possible another story.