31 Mac Menu Bar Tips and Tricks

Here are 31 useful tips that will help you get the most from the Mac Menu Bar. Learn how to find hidden items, select menus with just the keyboard, search for items, customize the right side and much more.
You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).
Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are 31 tips for using the Menu Bar on your Mac. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
So first there are two different ways to use the Menu Bar on your Mac. Either of them is right or wrong, it is just what you prefer. One is that you can click and hold on a Menu and then drag down to the item you want and release to activate it. Or, you can click once and then you can use the mouse or trackpad and then go down to the item you want and click again. 
Now most of the things that you can access in the Menu Bar have keyboard shortcuts. To learn those keyboard shortcuts you can just look right in the Menu Bar. So, for instance, if I look at the File Menu here I can see items to the right, like Command N for New Finder Window. Or, Control Command A for make alias. Or, Shift Command N for New Folder. All of these symbols just correspond to the keys on the keyboard. So, for instance, another one is the Option Key. Hide Tool Bar is Option Command T. Speaking of the Option Key, the Option Key actually gets you more options in the Menu. So if I go to a menu like this I can see items that are there. But if I then hold down the Option Key you can see some of those change. Like for instance Get Info changes to Show Inspector. If I look in the View Menu, hold down the Option Key changes Clean Up to Clean Up Selection. In the Go Menu a new hidden item even appears. If I hold the option key down you could see Library appears there. In the apps you use most it is important to hold the Option Key down and explore the menus to see what hidden commands there could be. 
Now you may notice that some things in the Menu Bar have three dots after them. Like System Settings, App Store, Force Quit, Restart and Shutdown. This is a safety mechanism. It means that when you choose one of these the action isn't going to be performed right away, or whatever the action is it's really not going to change anything. Like for instance I can choose Restart here. It's not going to restart. It's going to prompt me to restart. If I choose Logout the same thing. If I choose something like System Settings or App Store nothing is really going to change, it's just going to launch an app so the action is at least one step away. 
Now when you click once to reveal a menu you can then move the pointer around and get to different menus. If you decide to not use the Menu Bar you can just click elsewhere, but a way to get out of it without actually clicking anywhere is to use the Escape key. That just closes the menu without doing anything. 
Now if you don't know where an item is in the Menu Bar and you don't want to go hunting for it you can use the Help Menu. You may think that this is just for documentation and there are documentation links here. But the Search Field actually will search for menu items. So I could search here for Sort and it will show me that there are some sort options here. If I move my pointer over one it actually even shows me where it is so I can learn that now this is under View and then there's Sort By. Or, I could just activate it here.
Now if you want to use the Menu Bar with just the keyboard you can. Go into System Settings and then go down to Keyboard and then go to Keyboard Shortcuts. Look in Keyboard here on the left and look for Move Focus to the Menu Bar. You'll see here the default is Control F2 and I have it enabled. So make sure that is the same for you. Now if I want to use the Menu Bar I can do Control F2. I need to use the fn key in addition in order to use F keys. So I'm going to use fn and then Control and F2. I can use the Arrow Keys to move around and then down and then choose a menu item and then Return to activate it. 
Now there is also a keyboard shortcut for getting to this Help Menu where you can search for an item like this. That's to use Shift Command and then the Slash Key. Which is easy to remember as Command question mark. That takes you right here where you can now just immediately type. So this is another way to activate a menu item without using your mouse or trackpad. I can now use the down arrow key to go down and then I can activate anyone of these by using the Return key. 
If you just want to remember one keyboard shortcut just remember the Command and question mark or Command Shift and Slash. Because now only can you type but now I can use the left arrow key to go through the menus and down to get to something. So, Control F2 doesn't really need to be used as long as you don't mind starting all the way on the right and the Help Menu. 
You can also use Letters when you're in a menu. So I go to the File Menu here and if I type G it is going to jump to the first menu item that's starts with that letter. Now I can press Return to get to it. This is really useful when the menu is alphabetized like the View Menu here in System Settings. So I can hit F to jump right to the Focus Item in this list and then Return to activate it. 
Now you can also add your own keyboard shortcuts for anything in the Menu Bar. So in System Settings go to Keyboard, then go to Keyboard Shortcuts, and then you're going to want to go down to App Shortcuts here on the left. Click the Plus button, choose the application with the Menu Item, or All Applications if it's a menu item that's seen throughout several apps. Then put a menu title here. This should be exactly what you see in the Menu Bar. So for instance, in the FInder under Edit there is Show Clipboard with no keyboard shortcut. I don't need to worry about the fact that it is in the Edit Menu. I just have to worry about Show Clipboard spelled like this with two words, a space in-between them. Then I can choose from the list of applications, the Finder, and then put the menu title exactly as it was shown and then a keyboard shortcut like Control Shift Option Command C and Done. Now when I'm in the Finder here I could see under Edit Show Clipboard had that Keyboard Shortcut applied and I can use it. 
Now you may notice when you go to a Full Screen App that the Menu Bar is missing. If you move your pointer to the top it will then come down from the top. But when you're on the Desktop it's always there. You can customize how this works. Just go into System Settings and then go to Desktop & Dock right there. Under Menu Bar you can change Automatically Hide/Show the Menu Bar to Never. Now when I go to a Full Screen app you can see the Menu Bar is always there. Or, if I'd rather it be Never Present even on the Desktop I can change to Always for Always Hide and you can see it is not there on the Desktop and it's not here on a Full Screen App either. I also have the other option here to Hide on the Desktop Only, but show it in Full Screen Apps if I want that. 
Now you may also notice the color that you get here from Highlight in the Menu Bar. You can change that. Just go to Appearance in System Settings and change the Accent Color. So I'll change it to purple here and notice that the Menu Bar accent color is now purple. Just also notice that other things in other apps will change to purple as well. 
If you want the text in the Menu Bar to be bigger, well the first thing you might want to consider is going to Displays and changing your resolution. After all if the Menu Bar text is too small other text elsewhere is also too small. But if you really just want to change the Menu Bar text then you can go to Accessibility and then in Display look for Menu Bar Size. You can set it to Large. But you're going to have to Logout and Log back in for that to take effect. Also while you're here you can change whether the Menu Bar is semi-transparent. Notice my Menu Bar here is somewhat yellow because it is pulling on those colors from the Desktop wallpaper. Well, if you turn On Reduce Transparency the effect is less. If you turn On Increase Contrast then there's no effect at all. But that also changes how other things look as you can see here in System Settings.
Now let's go back to Desktop & Dock. There was another Menu Bar setting here. It was for how many Recent Documents, Applications, and Servers are Shown. That is in the Apple Menu under Recent Items. You could see all those things here. The number you set there also affects other things. Like, for instance, in the FInder here if you go to GO and then Recent Folders you'll see I also have ten items there. But if you want to have more or less recent items this is where you change it. 
Another interesting tip about this menu here is that if you want to Open  a recent document you can. But if you hold the Command Key down then it changes to Show in Finder. So now I can go to the folder that contains this item, rather than just opening the item itself. 
Now on the right side of the Menu Bar you see all of these different buttons and menus and you can highly customize what's there. To do that you want to go to System Settings and then you want to look in Control Center. In Control Center this is where you configure the Control Center which is this item right here. But these items can usually be placed in the Menu Bar as well. Here's where you change what is shown. So, for instance, if I want WiFi to show in the Menu Bar I can change it right here. I can go through and change all these things even the Spotlight, Siri, and Time Machine buttons here.
In addition, another way to do this is to go into Control Center and drag and drop. So if I wanted Displays to be up here I can simply drag Displays, put it in the Menu Bar, and now I've got it there. If you ever want to get rid of one of these you can hold the Command Key down and drag it. If you drag it down far enough until you see an X appear next to it then release. It removes it from the Menu Bar. You can also hold Command down and drag to reposition things. This is especially important if you have a Mac like a MacBook that has a notch here in the middle. Some of these items may not fit and you want to make sure the important ones are dragged as much to the right as possible. 
Also for a lot of these you get something different if you hold down the Option Key. Here's the Sound Menu here and I can change the volume and output. But if I hold the Option Key down I can also change the Input. This happens for a variety of these different menus here. 
On the right you should see a clock, maybe with the date and time, or some variation thereof. You can change how the clock looks by going in System Settings and then going to Control Center. Then if you scroll down you'll see under Clock, Clock Options. There are a ton of different options here. You could change exactly what is shown, whether the date is there or not, you can even have it be an analog clock. 
Now the Clock has a couple of different functions you may not know about. One is clicking on it reveals Notification Center. Another is you can Option Click on it to turn on Do Not Disturb. Notice when I have Do Not Disturb on that the time or date and time, whatever you've got here for the clock, it going to be gray. If you notice that this is gray that means you're in Do Not Disturb mode. If you want to turn off Do Not Disturb mode just Option click there again. If you'd rather have Do Not Disturb mode turned On but not have the time gray when that happens then all you need to do for that is place the Do Not Disturb button in the Menu Bar, somewhere. You could put it all the way here to the left. Once this is present it acts as the indicator for Do Not Disturb and the Clock doesn't change at all. So I can turn Do Not Disturb On and Off and you can see that changes but the clock doesn't .
Now another item you may see here is the Shortcuts Menu. This will show you any shortcuts that you've made where you've selected to have them appear in the Menu Bar. If you don't see this here that means that you haven't added any shortcuts that are set to appear in the Menu Bar. It's really handy to learn how to do that using the Shortcuts App because you can create very simply shortcuts that simply say open an app or Go to a webpage and have those appear in the Menu Bar and have quick and easy access to doing that specific thing. Not all shortcuts have to be really long and complex. They can be very simple just to get an action here in the Menu Bar. I have plenty tutorials that show you how to do shortcuts so I won't go into that now. 
But if you wanted to rearrange the order of these all you need to do is go into the Shortcuts App. Then look for the Menu Bar item under here. This shows you all of the items that are in there. If you want to change the order just change the order they appear in this menu. So you can see I've swapped those and they are swapped here. 
If I want to remove something from the Menu Bar I could go into it and change its setting. I could also Control click it, two-finger click on a trackpad, right click on a mouse, and then simply choose Remove From Menu Bar. That would take it out of here. It won't delete the shortcut. You'll still have it but you'll no longer see it here. 
So here are two more keyboard shortcuts you may not know about. If you use the fn key or the Globe Key on newer Macs and you press N it will bring up Notification Center. You don't have to click on it to bring it up. If you use fn and C it brings up Control Center. Although this is only somewhat useful because then you pretty much have to use the trackpad or mouse to do anything with Control Center. 
Here's one last one. You probably know that clicking on this button will bring up Spotlight Search. Then you can use the Spotlight Menu here to do whatever you want. But if you ever dragged it around and put it somewhere else to get it out of the way and now every time you bring up Spotlight Search it is in that position. If you want to get it back into the center you don't have to kind of guess where the center is. You can simply click and hold the magnifying glass in the Menu Bar. After two seconds it will pop it back into its exact original position. 
There you go. There are a whole bunch of tips for using th Menu Bar on your Mac. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
Comments: 5 Responses to “31 Mac Menu Bar Tips and Tricks”

Corin Moore
1 year ago
Extremely useful tips - appreciated. Saves time and opens up possibilities hitherto not known by me.
Frank
Hi Gary. I have noticed in a few of your videos the mention of pressing "option" on the Go menu in finder to see "Library" However on my macbook it ALWAYS shows and has "shift cmd + L". Any ideas what setting on my machine were altered? Thanks
Gary Rosenzweig
Frank: Use Go, Home to go to your Home folder. Then View, Show View Options. Then there is a check box for Show Library Folder that is only present when you are viewing your Home folder. If checked, you'll see the Library in your Home folder and in the Go menu.
Thanks Gary there are so many options!! I forgot that I had it checked. BTW I usually CMD + J to get to that menu. You're the BEST, thanks again!
Roy Whelden
Great tips and tricks. Thanks!
Comments Closed.
31 Mac Menu Bar Tips and Tricks

Comments: 5 Responses to “31 Mac Menu Bar Tips and Tricks”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information
