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Overcrowded menu bar in Sonoma driving me crazy

S

swingerofbirch

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Oct 24, 2003
3,679
4,594
The Amalgamated States of Central North America
I'm somewhat new to a notched MacBook (MacBook Pro 14"), but I hadn't really had issues with overcrowding and the notch until updating to Sonoma.

I have a complicated set up where I almost always have my MBP's screen shared, which necessarily means there is an unavoidable screen sharing menu bar icon. That's always been the case.

In Sonoma there's a new icon showing the screen is being recorded, which is for a different application that I use, called Rewind. The icons are nearly identical glyphs. They could easily put the functionality of showing the screen is being observed and the screen is being recorded into the same icon's drop down menu. And they could let you put it in Control Center. But they don't.

And for some reason, upgrading to Sonoma now makes Google Chrome show its entire name. It used to just show Chrome in the menu bar. Chrome had never spanned past the notch before, and I'm not sure if it's just that it has the extra word Google or if there's extra spacing, as well, but now Window and Help are to the right of the notch which they never were before.

I spend almost all of my time in Chrome, and I find myself clicking on the Finder icon constantly to get to my other menu bar icons. And even then some are still hidden.

The rewind icon stays hidden as does Chroma (which I use to control my Hue lights). All of my iStat menus remain hidden except for the weather icon. Before the update, I had everything so it just barely fit.

My display is on the 1352x878 equivalent resolution. I can't go any higher with my eyes.

Honestly this just kind of looks like a sloppy mess to me. And it doesn't just look bad, it's functionally silly that I'm clicking on the Finder to get to functions I use all the time in the menu bar and still not seeing all of them.

I did submit feedback to apple through feedbackassistant.apple.com but my track record with hearing back is not good.
 

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That does look pretty messy. I have two suggestions for you as possible work-arounds and to improve:

1) You already have iStat Menus. Enable its "Time" menu bar item for the date to show in a smaller square, and change the macOS setting to not show the date (System Settings > Control Center > scroll down to the "Menu Bar Only" area and click on "Clock Options," then for Show Date set "Never"). This is significantly smaller than having "Sep 27" displayed in the date and time. (For those who don't have iStat Menus and would like to do something similar, a free alternative that specifically serves this function is Itsycal.)

2) Not free, but consider purchasing Bartender. I've used this for years and view it as essential software on Mac. It will hide items from the menu bar, allowing you to expand them out on demand or presenting them in a secondary menu bar. You have control over what it hides or doesn't hide, and can also have it be dynamic so that items leave Bartender and return to the menu bar when it updates something. Useful if you have a lot of items that would show up in the menu bar but still want them to be accessible at times (like me) or if you are working with a small display, and essential if you're suffering from both many menu bar items and a small display.
 
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Menubar crowding can definitely be an issue on a notched 14" MacBook Pro.

There's no solution quite like getting a bigger monitor, and if you love filling your menu bar with shortcuts and utilities, you do not want to change your screen resolution, and are unhappy with the crowding, you should seriously consider a larger monitor.

But in the mean time, you can try:

  1. Moving your volume, wifi, and battery out of the menu bar and into control center.
  2. Adjust the Time/Date in Settings > Control Center > Clock Options. You can set it to only show the date when there is available space, but maybe you have it set to Always.
  3. In the Applications folder, click "Google Chrome" and go to File > Get Info. Set "Scale to fit below built-in camera" which will lower the menu bar down when in that app.
  4. Set "Menu Bar Size" to Default in Settings > Accessibility > Display instead of Large
  5. Figure out why you have two icons that are there to tell you that your screen is being recorded (The purple ones).
 
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