Mac Basics: Status Menus

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's look at using the Status Menus in the Mac Menu Bar.

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So the Status Menus are the little icons that you see at the top right hand corner of your Mac screen. They are part of the Menu Bar but instead of having words, like File, Edit, View, Go, they've got symbols here on the top right. They all do various different things. But for the most part when you click one, like the Bluetooth icon here, you get a menu that contains controls and switches. So here in Bluetooth I can turn Bluetooth on and off and I can see information about different Bluetooth devices. I can also choose this item here which takes me to Bluetooth Preferences. But not all of them work that way. For instance the Spotlight icon will show the Spotlight Search Menu right in the middle of the screen. The Siri button will activate Siri and the Date & Time in the upper right hand corner will bring up Notification Center. 

Now adding and removing these can be done several different ways. In some cases they are part of different System Preferences. For instance for Bluetooth if I go to System Preferences and then to Bluetooth I'll see a Checkbox here for Show Bluetooth in Menu Bar. If I uncheck that you could see it disappeared and if I check it again it reappears. Sometimes third party apps put things there and they have their own controls and their own settings. You'll see, for instance, ScreenFlow here and it actually is there only because I'm running ScreenFlow at the time and recording. Other times icons will appear there even if the app isn't currently running and you would normally add those and remove those in the preferences for that app. 

If you want to know what one of these does simply click it and you usually get enough information from the Context here to figure it out. For instance, I click the Sound Menu here and you could see I've got a sound volume control and I also could control what output I'm currently using for the sound on my Mac. 

Now there's a very special icon here called Control Center. If you click that you get a variety of different controls. For instance here I could see WiFi, Bluetooth, AirDrop Controls, Do Not Disturb, Screen Mirroring, Display Brightness, and Volume. Also Music and Audio Playback controls. So Control Center is fairly new and the idea is instead of having of tons status menus you have a lot of very common things under one Status Menu. But actually a lot of these can be individual status menus as well. For instance Bluetooth we already see here. But if I also wanted WiFi to be up there I could click and drag WiFi up to the top just to add it there. Now I can access WiFi controls here in Control Center, by clicking there, but I could also access the same controls directly in Status Menu. 

Now if you go to System Preferences and then to Dock & Menu Bar if you look on the left here a lot of these things pertain to Control Center. So, for instance, I could click here and I could see for WiFi it's in Control Center, and this is where it's located which is indeed the case. I could also select whether or not to show in the Menu Bar or not. You could go though all the various items here and all of them have Show in Menu Bar selected. Then below this you've got other modules and sometimes you could add those to the Menu Bar and Control Center. Sometimes Menu Bar only such as these items here. You may see more depending upon what you have installed. Note here under Clock you also can determine what is shown for the clock. So whether or not the date is shown and what format is used for the time. 

You also can arrange these pretty easily right here in the Menu Bar. Hold the Command key down and click and drag left or right to rearrange the order. The Control Center, Siri, and the Time are always going to be at the right. But everything else can be moved around. So I can move Sound out to here. Also you can easily remove things by simply Command clicking and dragging down until you see the little x there and then releasing. That's the same as unchecking it in System Preferences to remove it. So if you find that you have too many items here you may want to get rid of some that you could already accessing in Control Center. For instance, I'll get rid of Bluetooth here and WiFi since I can easily access them here in Control Center. But I'll leave Fast User Switching because that's not available in Control Center and I want easy access to it. 

So I'll end with a couple of tips. One is if you hold the Option Key down you'll get extra options for some of the menus. For instance normally if I click on Sound I'll have Volume Control and I'll be able to set the output. But if I hold the Option Key down and click I'll not only get Outputs but also Inputs here and I can change those. 

For Bluetooth if I select it usually I just see my devices and an On and Off switch. But if I hold the Option Key down I get lots of additional information about each device. The same thing for WiFi. Normally I just see my preferred network here, when I'm connected to it. I can turn off WiFi. If I hold the Option Key down it gives me lots of additional information. 

Also the Option Key works for the Date & Time to turn on and off Do Not Disturb. Normally you could do that in Control Center here and click Do Not Disturb to turn it on or off. But if you just Option click on the Time you could see it's grayed out now, meaning I have Do Not Disturb turned on. 

Finally, if you bring up Spotlight Search you could move this around anywhere you want. But if you want to get it back to the center all you need to do is click and hold the Spotlight Status Menu there and it will snap back to its default location.

If you have third party apps that have Status Menu icons here then try holding the Option Key down and clicking on them to see if there's some hidden functions there.