The most controversial thing about the MacBook Pro that was just released is the notch. While it gives you insanely thin bezels, it does cut into the menu bar. That’s a problem for me as I run iStat Menus which monitors things like RAM and CPU usage as well as system temperature. If I have enough things active, it runs up against the notch:
On the left side of the screenshot is where the notch is. If anything else enters the menu bar, it goes under the notch. For example I’ve gotten rid of the Bluetooth icon for that reason as it was inaccessible at times. I needed a more elegant solution. Which is why after some research I installed a utility called Bartender. What Bartender does is allows you to take control of your menu bar so you can decide what is visible, and when it is visible. In my case when I run it, it makes my menu bar look like this:
While I clearly have a lot more space on my menu bar, you’re likely wondering where the rest of the stuff went to. Well, the stuff that I don’t need to look at on a constant basis gets placed here:
You can see that there’s a hidden menu bar with items that I don’t need on a constant basis. You can make it reappear if you click on the three dots. But the really cool thing is that they can reappear when needed. For example:
- When I am on battery power, the battery icon will show.
- When Time Machine is doing a backup, the Time Machine icon will show.
- When I am disconnected from WiFi, the WiFi icon will show.
- When my Cisco AnyConnect VPN Connection gets dropped, the icon will show.
- When Garmin Connect has a notification, the icon will show.
The net result is that I get some space on my menu bar that allows me to see what I need to see, while making sure that the notch will not be an issue. And this setup can help anyone who doesn’t have a new MacBook Pro, but simply has a Mac with a ton of menu bar items.
Hopefully this tip helps you. If you have any ideas as to how to bring sanity to your menu bar, leave a comment or send me an email and share your thoughts.