DEV Community

Shawon Saha
Shawon Saha

Posted on

Fix the Notch: How to Stop macOS Hiding Your Menu Bar Icons

#opensource #productivity #tooling #tutorial

The notch on modern MacBooks gives us beautiful, near-borderless displays. But for heavy multitaskers, it introduces a frustrating design flaw: macOS hides menu bar icons behind the notch when you run out of space. Because Apple provides no native overflow menu, essential utility apps simply disappear into a digital black hole. You shouldn't have to force-quit applications just to access your status icons.

Here is how to quickly reclaim your MacBook menu bar real estate.

1. Condense Everything with "Only Switch" (Free & Open Source)

If your menu bar is cluttered with individual icons for Dark Mode, Keep Awake, Bluetooth, and Night Shift, you are wasting prime real estate.

Only Switch is a powerful, open-source utility that consolidates dozens of settings into a single menu bar icon. Clicking it reveals a clean dropdown panel of customizable toggles. By replacing five or six separate app icons with just one, you instantly clear massive space so other apps never get pushed behind the notch.

  • Bonus Feature: Only Switch includes a "Hide Notch" toggle that turns the menu bar background pure black, blending the notch seamlessly into the display bezel.

2. Hide Clutter with a Menu Bar Manager

If you have a large collection of apps that need to stay running, use a dedicated manager to collapse them into a hidden drawer.

  • Ice (Free & Open Source): A modern, lightweight app designed specifically for macOS that lets you hide or show icons with a simple toggle arrow.
  • Hidden Bar (Free): An ultra-minimalist "collapsible drawer" tool. Hold Command (⌘) and drag low-priority icons behind the separator bar to tuck them out of sight.
  • Bartender (Paid): The gold standard. It creates a secondary "bar" completely underneath the main menu bar when you hover your mouse, ensuring zero icons are ever lost.

3. Tighten Icon Spacing via Terminal (No Apps Required)

Apple quietly increased the horizontal padding between menu bar icons in recent macOS versions, wasting valuable screen width. You can force macOS to tighten this spacing using two quick Terminal commands:

  1. Open Terminal (Cmd + Space and type Terminal).
  2. Paste this command and press Enter to shrink the icon containers: 
defaults write com.apple.controlcenter "NSStatusItem2ExtensionMinPadding" -int 6
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  1. Paste this command and press Enter to reduce the gap between icons: 
defaults write com.apple.controlcenter "NSStatusItemSpacing" -int 6
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  1. Apply the changes by restarting the control center: 
killall ControlCenter
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

To revert to Apple's default airy spacing, run the same commands but change -int 6 to -int 12.

The 5-Second Emergency Fix

If an icon you desperately need right now is hidden behind the notch, don't panic. Go to System Settings > Displays and temporarily select "More Space" as your resolution. This shrinks the UI, expanding the menu bar text and forcing the hidden icons to pop out so you can click them.

Summary: What is the best solution?

For the cleanest setup, install Only Switch to consolidate your toggles, or use Ice to hide secondary icons. Combined with the Terminal spacing tweak, your MacBook notch will never block your workflow again.

Top comments (0)