MacOS Monterey 12.5 Dims Menubar Clock in Do Not Disturb Mode

[BanditoB]

Ugh! The MacOS Monterey update to v12.5 has changed the behavior of the menubar clock. It now dims and becomes virtually invisible when the Mac is in Do Not Disturb mode. Who on earth thought this would be a good idea? Why wouldn't I want to see the clock when Do Not Disturb in enabled?

I filed feedback with Apple and I hope that they either revert to the original behavior or make this an option that's controllable by the user. In the meantime, I've had to disable DND on my Macs which rather defeats the purpose.

Okay, rant over. Thanks for letting me vent!

 

[chabig]

My clock doesn't change at all with DND. You probably do have an option set somewhere that's causing it. I searched around a little bit but could not find anything.

 

[fakestrawberryflavor]

I do not see or have this behavior on my M1 Mini or M1 Max MBP. No dimming in regular or DnD focus modes at all, so unsure what you are talking about.

 

[rm5]

This is not a new issue. I've had this ever since the first version of Monterey, it's awful - you can't read anything on the clock!

 

[BanditoB]

Hmm...mine was fine under 12.4, but the behavior changed under 12.5. This is happening on a new M2 MacBook Air. Maybe I'll give Apple a call to see what they say.

And, perhaps I won't call them. I just found an answer in the Apple Support forums. It seems that the dimming clock display under Do Not Disturb is a feature of MacOS Big Sur and later. There is, however, somewhat of a workaround for this issue. If you turn on display Do Not Disturb in the menu bar, then the system won't mess with dimming the clock. You just get the moon symbol in the menubar when DnD is enabled.

Personally, I think this is a stupid feature. Just because I don't want notifications and such to bother me during DnD, doesn't mean I don't want to be able to see the clock. At least there is a halfway reasonable workaround.

 

[chabig]

Try changing your desktop wallpaper. I suspect an interaction with the menu bar, or fiddle with the controls in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display such as Reduce Transparency or Display contrast.

 

[BanditoB]

It's not the wallpaper that makes a difference. It is a combination of settings. If you disable the display of the Do Not Disturb menubar icon, the partial moon, then the menubar clock dims when you enter Do Not Disturb. You can observe this directly by going into Control Center and toggling Do Not Disturb on and off. If you then re-enable the display of Do Not Disturb, then toggling Do Not Disturb in the Control Center only displays and hides the moon icon.

 

[chabig]

That's interesting. Mine does not behave that way. In fact, I can't find any combination of settings that dims the clock.

 

[BanditoB]

@chabig, what model of Mac are you running? Perhaps this is an M-series only feature, though I can't see why it would be.

Maybe it is a bug after all and will be fixed in the future, but the fact that enabling Sleep to be displayed on the menubar corrects the issue makes it seem like a deliberate behavior.

 

[chabig]

I’ve got a M1 MacBook Pro.

 

[BanditoB]

Well, there goes the M-series theory. Perhaps your system is the one that's not working correctly? 😃

 

[dadler]

Ugh! The MacOS Monterey update to v12.5 has changed the behavior of the menubar clock. It now dims and becomes virtually invisible when the Mac is in Do Not Disturb mode. Who on earth thought this would be a good idea? Why wouldn't I want to see the clock when Do Not Disturb in enabled?

I filed feedback with Apple and I hope that they either revert to the original behavior or make this an option that's controllable by the user. In the meantime, I've had to disable DND on my Macs which rather defeats the purpose.

Okay, rant over. Thanks for letting me vent!

Same - fixed it here: system preferences > notifications and focus > focus > turned off do not disturb.

Mini-rant: I generally like Apple products, but I wonder if they understand the frustration... to learn... spend time with... figure out... any number of minutia-things. Just to have Apple change it later. Focus? Really? I would give up all sorts of bells and whistles and functionality in favor of consistency and continuity. my 2 sense.

 

[BanditoB]

Just as an update, my M2 MBA no longer dims the clock when DND is enabled. I don't know what changed, but it's behaving as expected now. I checked my Mac Studio to see if it behaved the same way, but it never dimmed the clock text with DND on, so I think that whatever it was was an anomaly of some sort. The only thing that might have made a difference is if I happened to reboot the MBA in between checking this, but I don't recall doing so.

 

[Loa]

I still have the dimming effect as well. And no, turning off DnD isn't a fix. A fix would be to have DnD turned on AND a bright clock!

(Mac Studio here)

 

[minik]

It happens on my 14-inch MacBook Pro when DND was on, still on 12.5.

 

[tpsavard]

I noticed this behavior myself starting on a 2019 16" Macbook Pro that I had just (minutes before) upgraded to 12.5.1, and managed to address it, at least for the moment.

For background: I have DnD turned on (Work focus mode), but I did not have the DnD menu bar status enabled.

Flipping the DnD menu bar to enabled (System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar > Focus > Show in Menu Bar) fixed the color of the clock for me; it stayed fixed after turning the Show in Menu bar back off. FWIW, I have not restarted to logged off/on, so I can't comment on whether this fix will hold over those actions.

Hope this helps.

 

[BanditoB]

Hmm...when DnD kicked in tonight, the menubar clock dimmed again. I did what @tpsavard did and it's working normally again for now, but I don't know if it will survive a reboot or not. It might even do it again tomorrow when DnD kicks back in.

 

[Loa]

Yeah, dimming came back for me as well.

 

[BanditoB]

Anybody else with the dimming issue running iStat Menus? Just curious as this is the only menubar application that I use and I was wondering if it could be causing the problem.

 

[Loa]

I used to run iStats, but not any more.

 

[BanditoB]

Okay. Thanks. That pretty much answers that question.