The menu bar on a Mac tends to get cluttered with icons over time. Between system icons such as Spotlight, date and clock, wi-fi, third-party applications, various utilities, and popular tools, it is very easy for the menu bar to become a dense series of images that are distracting and difficult to interact with.
The integration of the Mac menu bar is especially problematic for modern Mac laptops that have an annoying Notch that cuts right through the menu bar, because not only does the Notch cut out of the screen, it also ends up blocking the menu bar icons that end up being hidden behind it and completely inaccessible.
Fortunately, recent versions of macOS provide the user with some options to remove the menu bar and remove and hide icons easily, allowing you to quickly improve your menu bar experience.
How To Remove Mac Menu Bar Via System Settings
In today’s macOS versions like Tahoe, there is now a dedicated “Menu Bar” section of System Settings where you can manage the visibility of menu bar items and tools:
- Go to the Apple menu and select “System Settings”
- Go to “Menu Bar”
- Scroll down and look below Menu Bar Controls, and turn the check box off for any menu bar items you don’t use, don’t need, or might not find useful.
Removing items from the menu bar is the best way to differentiate and improve the experience of the menu bar on the Mac, and this becomes especially valuable on Mac laptops with a display that cuts across the screen.
A good rule of thumb for managing the Mac menu bar is to hide anything you don’t need frequent or quick access to, especially if you can access it from Control Center (which is, in itself, another menu bar item). So things like changing Bluetooth, sound levels, Time Machine, screen mirroring, Focus Mode, you might consider hiding, and instead rely on accessing those things through Control Center instead. I also hide most of the unnecessary third-party tools from my menu bar, as it seems that almost every tool and application these days wants to include a menu bar item.
Select, close and remove anything you don’t use often, and if you don’t use it often, you’ll probably want to hide it.
Another tip to remember for MacBook models with a terrible display notch is that you can use applications to lower down the camera that reduces the screen resolution to remove the notch, and this can be important for some applications with many menu items in general, which then disappear behind the display notch pox.
Reordering Mac Menu Bar Items
Another useful trick for managing the old Mac menu bar goes back to early versions of macOS, and that is to arrange and rearrange the menu bar icons to your liking.
To rearrange the menu bar icons, simply hold down the Command key, then click and drag them to their new location. This is straightforward.
You can also use Command+Drag to remove items from the menu bar if you like.
Still frustrated? Third-party tools can hide and show menu bar items on Mac
Another option is to use third-party utilities that can hide menu bar items, usually placing them behind an expandable icon. The idea is very simple; all the icons you don’t want to be visible all the time will be behind the arrow, which you click on and the icons expand out of it for a while.
There are a variety of options available to do this task, including a free tool like Vanilla to hide and show menu bar icons, or paid apps like Bartender that offer similar features.
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A clean menu bar on the Mac helps focus, makes it easier to quickly scan other menu bar items, provides less visible clutter, and makes it less likely that important menu items and icons get lost behind the weird display notch that somehow persists on high-end Mac laptops.
Do you manage your Mac menu bar? Do you keep your menu bar small, or do you prefer quick access to everything?