With the Bluetooth icon shown, you can change to another Bluetooth device, send and browse for files, and turn it off (ultimately saving a little more battery). To move icons around within the designated area, once again hold Command, then click and hold the icon to drag it. Spotlight and Notification Center must stay put, as must all third-party apps. Note that, if your battery doesn’t seem like it’s lasting as long as you would like it to, the battery icon will show which apps are using the most energy, then you can close those apps to eke more time out of a charge. And if you are not there yet, it’s time to upgrade to the newest macOS anyway. With the keyboard and character viewers enabled, you gain easy access to the onscreen keyboard, symbols, arrows, and more. Go to the Clock tab and unlock the preferences by entering your administrator password, so that you can make changes. This includes stuff like users, groups, parental controls, accessibility, and more. Of the six items available here, we’re going to discuss the Network and Bluetooth preferences. The Accessibility options include an array of tools for zooming, showing captions, setting sticky keys, and much more. The preferences are laid out in four rows, representing the following (more or less) categories: personal, hardware, Internet and wireless, and system. Want to place the Setapp icon over to the area of the bar once reserved for first-party apps? Of the seven items on the Hardware preferences, we’re going to focus on Displays, Energy Saver, Keyboard, and Sound. It is possible to remove third-party icons from the top bar on Mac by clicking on them and selecting “Quit” or “Close,” but this will stop the app from working until you reopen it. Once you’ve found the item you need, click on “Show Package Contents” and navigate to the icon via [MENUITEM.menu] > Contents > Resources. Spotlight and Notification Center must stay put, as must all third-party apps. For instance, to enable the Language icon, select Language & Region in the preference pane, click Input Sources, and check the box next to “Show Input menu in menu bar.”. The Displays preferences allow you to change stuff with your system’s displays, both built-in and attached. There may also be a fifth row (not pictured) with third-party applications and utilities, if you have installed any. Now you can access the menu whenever you need it and enjoy an extra bit of screen real estate when you don’t. Beyond that, it provides the usual quick shortcut to the preferences if you need to make any changes. So while ultimately simple in purpose, it’s also fairly indispensable. We’re almost finished, we have just one more system preference menu bar item to talk about. Is there anything else that OS X lets you add to the menu bar that you can tell us about? To change the icon of a third-party app, find it in Applications, right-click to open a context menu, and choose “Show Package Contents.” Go to Resources folder to find the defaults – these can be used as templates for the new icons. The only icon that cannot be tampered with is the Notification Center. Anything enclosed with a red square has an option to add a menu bar icon, some even allow for further customization. Click on the icon and open Users & Groups Preferences. For everyone else using a wireless desktop or Macbook (which is a lot of Apple users), the Wi-Fi status is more than likely a staple icon on your menu bar. If you want to have custom icons in your Mac’s menu bar, there’s a way to replace the default ones. Type a path: /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras. Don’t forget, you can also enable the 24-hour clock in the Language & Region settings. However, a lot of apps won’t. ), you will see them displayed here when you click on the flag icon on your menu bar, so you can effortlessly switch between them. Rethink the menu bar with this app. To get the menu bar to show up again, simply move the cursor to the top of the screen and hold it there for a second. Dock icons are a quick way to bring a hidden window or application to the front so that you can work with it again. To move icons around within the designated area, once again hold Command, then click and hold the icon to drag it. More often than not, you won’t see Location Services requesting information, or it will happen very briefly, and the little arrow will then disappear. That’s the extent of Language & Region’s influence on the menu bar. Best of all, you can get full access to Bartender and over 150 more high-quality macOS apps on Setapp, with a 7-day free trial to get you started. In the right corner of your menu bar, click on date and time to Open Date & Time Preferences. How much freedom you have to rearrange items in menu bar depends on which version of macOS you’re running. Select Login Options in the bottom left corner of the Users & Groups. If you need to change how your laptop consumes energy on battery, or the way the keyboard or trackpad behaves, or all things printer-related, the Hardware preferences are the place to go. One final note, you can change the clock to 24-hour format versus AM/PM but obviously you can’t have both (that wouldn’t make sense). Join 350,000 subscribers and get a daily digest of news, geek trivia, and our feature articles. There’s no way to access the input sources when the keyboard and character viewers are shown, but you can always “Open Keyboard Preferences…” if you need to change to another input source. Most icons are selected (highlighted) when you single click and opened when you double-click. Beyond hiding or showing the fast user switching menu, you can decide whether it appears as an icon, your full name, or your account name. If you hold the “Option” key you can verify backups and browse other backup disks. If there are items in the menu bar that you feel don’t belong there, hold Command, click on the icon, and drag it outside of the menu bar. When the former is hidden, the latter is the shown (unless it too is hidden). Clicking on the Accessibility status icon will simply show you which accessibility features are off and which ones are on. It really is an OS relic that just keeps going and going and going. Join 350,000 subscribers and get a daily digest of news, comics, trivia, reviews, and more. With the input menu item enabled, if you have multiple keyboards (US English, UK English, Spanish, Russian, etc. If you’re in need of other pertinent and advanced connection information, such as your IP address, MAC address, or you want to enable/disable Wi-Fi logging, then you can use the “Option” key for further options. Using the tips above, you can customize the menu bar in a way that works for you. If you’ve removed the first-party app and you’d like it back on the menu, it can be re-enabled in System Preferences. All the Built-In Icons You Can Show on Your Mac’s Menu Bar (Probably), configure how notifications appear, if at all, we have an Apple TV to which we can mirror our desktop, if your battery doesn’t seem like it’s lasting as long, you can always “Open Keyboard Preferences…”, learn more about the options available to you, How to Create and Manage To-Dos in WhatsApp Using Any.Do, How to Insert Outlook Contact Information in Microsoft Word, How to Pair Two Amazon Echo Alexa Speakers for Stereo Sound, Mike Tyson vs. Roy Jones Jr.: How to Stream the Fight Live. By now, you’ve likely noticed other icons on our menu bar, which let us control third-party applications – things like Skitch, Dropbox, Parallels, and many more. Setapp uses cookies to personalize your experience on our website. Laptop users will be most concerned with the Energy Saver options, though desktop users will likely want to make changes to how their system consumes or conserves power. You can alter the system’s appearance (a little), change dock behavior, and configure how notifications appear, if at all.