Unable To Use The Hide or Show The Menu Bar On MAC? Read This!

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Menu bar: The ‘Menu bar’ is a graphical control element comprising drop-down menus. The menu bar has been designed for grouping application-specific menus on Mac systems. Most importantly, the menu bar provides the facility for accessing various functions such as the display of help manuals, opening files, or using an application.

The menu bar changes according to the application selected to use. The menus and icons in the menu bar can be used for giving commands, checking the status, and performing various tasks.

The Mac menu bar is always available at the top of the screen, with menus, Control Center, and other such utilities. But it takes up a sufficient amount of screen. If you have a small screen then you need to say no to the Menu bar.

If you want some space on your screen, then the easiest way possible is by hiding the menu bar on Mac. You can access it by moving your cursor to the top of your screen, even when it is hidden. You can bring it back again whenever required.

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The Menu Bar provides access to:

~ System Functions,

~ Shortcut to recently-used apps,

~ App menus, etc.

The new versions of Mac OS allow the Mac users to automatically hide and show the menu bar at the top of the screen. Hiding the menu bar eliminates just about everything visible on the screen apart from the active windows and screens.

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Hiding Menu Bar on MAC

Here’s how to automatically hide or show the menu bar on Mac

Step 1: First, you need to click on the ‘Apple icon’, and then choose the ‘System Preferences’ option.

Step 2: If you are operating the ‘MacOS Big Sur’ or higher, then you need to select the ‘Dock & Menu Bar’ option.

Whereas if you are using ‘MacOS Catalina’ or the older version, then you need to choose the ‘General’ option.

Step 3: Now you need to click on the ‘Dock & Menu Bar’ from ‘System Preferences’.

Step 4: From the ‘Menu Bar’ section, you need to click on the ‘checkmark’ next to the ‘Automatically Hide and Show the Menu Bar’ option.

Note: If you are using ‘MacOS Catalina’ or an older version, then you will find this option in the ‘Appearance’ section on your device.

After this, you will notice that the menu bar of your Mac will disappear from your screen.

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Bringing back the menu bar

You can move your cursor at the top of your screen, or you can use the ‘Fn+Control+F2’ keyboard shortcut to temporarily enable the menu bar.

Step 1: However, if you want to permanently enable the menu bar on your screen, you need to go back to the ‘System Preferences’.

Step 2: From there, you need to disable the ‘Automatically Hide and Show the Menu Bar’ option.

After that, you will find that the menu bar has reappeared on your screen.

Please Note: You can also use your keyboard to enable the menu bar on your Mac.

To access the menu bar through the keyboard, you need to press “Ctrl + F2”.

Remember, it will disappear automatically once you are not performing any action on your device.

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Hide and show the menu bar in Mac OS X

If you have a Mac OS X 10.11 then, to hide and show the menu bar, you need to follow the steps mentioned below:

Step 1: First, you need to open the ‘System Preferences’ from the ‘Apple menu’ or with the ‘spotlight’

Step 2: Now you need to go to the ‘General’ option in the preference panel. At the top of the new window, several options will be displayed on your screen under the ‘Appearance menu’.

Step 3: After that, you need to put a tick on the box present in front of the ‘Automatically hide and show the menu bar’ option to disable your menu bar.

Note: When the menu bar is hidden, You can hover your mouse on the top of the screen and it will automatically enable the menu bar, just like it happens with the ‘Mac Dock’ when it’s hidden.

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When your menu bar is visible, there is the ease of access. Plus you can also see the clock, battery, and wi-fi status icons.

While when the menu bar is hidden, it eliminates any kind of distraction. Plus it will free up a few more pixels at the top of your Mac display especially if you feel particularly cramped with space.

You can easily change this back to the default setting, by returning to the preference panel and removing the ‘tick’ from the small box in front of the ‘Automatically hide and show the menu bar’ option.

You can even switch your menu bar to the ‘Dark Mode’ if you are wanting it to look less distracting. This will display it as black rather than white.

For the more advanced users who want to enable ‘Automatically hide the menu bar’ in Mac OS X by defaults command, the steps are mentioned below:

“defaults write NSGlobalDomain _HIHideMenuBar -bool true”

The above-mentioned command will disable the ‘Automatically hiding menu bar’ in your Mac OS X.

“defaults write NSGlobalDomain _HIHideMenuBar -bool false”

The above mentioned false state is the default state, meaning the menu bar is always visible and is not hidden.

Please Note: You might need to ‘log out’, ‘back in’, or ‘kill SystemUIServer’ for the required change to come into effect in some cases.

So this was all about automatically how you can hide or show the menu bar on Mac. We hope this was helpful to you.