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What to do when menubar is full?

aaagat111

aaagat111

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 12, 2005
204
0
St. Louis, MO
I have so many things running in my menu bar that it is full...meaning that any new applications that requires menu bar space are not shown (because they are so far to the left, and the application menu options take front priority over them).

What do people usually do when this happens besides just not running some of the menu bar apps (since that is really not a reasonable solution in this case)?

Thanks,

Alex
 
Look through the preferences of those apps. Many will let you turn the menubar icon off and on. If you still can't get enough space, then you'll have to quit some of those apps.

Even if you're running a 13" MacBook, surely you don't absolutely need every single one of those menubar icons!
 
The more I think of it, there is definitely not a way to get any more space. I guess the only option here is to quit/hide some of the apps.

It's a shame but oh well...
 
So absolutely none of the apps have a way to turn off the menubar icon without quitting the app? Unless they're all menubar specific apps... in which case you're using up a lot of CPU/RAM just running that many.
 
this seems to be about the most I can fit. I understand i don't need all of these, especially the istats monitor, but was simply looking to see if anybody had an alternative

 
You could leave all the numerical info for MenuMeters and just turn off the graphs, and then you have Finder in the Dock, so you could remove it without losing functionality I think. That would free up a decent bit of space.
 
Some of those icons are not really needed. For example, you have an Adobe updater icon there with 17 awaiting updates....click on it and run the update then the icon goes and you gain space.
 
Take bmcgonag's advice. You could also drop the numerical info and change the graphs to a more compact icon (the CPU graphs could be thermometers, for example). Also drop the percentage tag on the battery, it will show it when you click on it anyway.

But, yeah, getting rid of the extra/redundant data shown in iStat Menus will free up tons of space.
 
Remove some of the items you may not frequently use such as the BT icon, change the battery status to icon only etc.

You're rather limited in terms of available options as already mentioned.
Increase the resolution, or start removing icons to make room.
 
My tips: Instead of iStat menus you can use those things:
1. Apple's own utility called "Activity monitor". You can find it with spotlight or in the applications folder and then in the Utilities folder.

2. You can download the iStat widget for dashboard, which does the same, but in dashboard: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatnano.html
Here is the pro version (paid) : http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatpro.html

3. Display all the process related things on your desktop with geektool:
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/customize_your_desktop_geektool

And like others have said, you can hide the airport, bluetooth, and Time Machine icons with system preferences. And while you're in system preferences, take a look in the date and time section and see if you can live without the day displaying in your menubar.

Hope I helped. :)
 
Thank you all very much for you replies. Almost all of the generic icons such as time machine, bluetooth, and airport I use insanely frequently, so removing them isn't an option but I will take the suggestions of trying to limit the istat space as well as some of the other suggestions.


Alex
 
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