How to Reduce Clutter from Menu Bar

How to Reduce Clutter from Menu Bar

July 7, 2011 in General, Mac, Tricks & Tips by Angelina Roberts

There are many ways to reduce the clutter from your menu bar while keeping the functionality intact. Let’s see some of them:

1. Hiding items

Hiding items might not sound very important, but there are many apps that aren’t used frequently. To hide an app, right click on it and select the hiding option from the pop-up menu. The hiding option might be in preferences for some apps. Once the extra apps are hidden, your menu bar would be clutter free.

2. Remove spotlight

If you don’t need Spotlight, you can turn it off. But if you do need it, just remove the icon by typing

sudo chmod 0 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app

in command prompt of Leopard. To see the differences, use this command:

killall SystemUIServer

You can use apps like QuickSilver to replace Spotlight. Launchbar comes for $35 and is famous for being superior to Spotlight.

3. GeekTool

Clock takes up quite some room, so if you clear it, you will get more space for other apps. Download GeekTool and open it using System Preferences. Enter date

‘+%A, %B %d, %Y, %I:%M:%S %p’

in command shell.

Keep the refresh rate as once per second. You can take off the %s and get a small clock that doesn’t require a lot of processor action.

Now you will have a Geeklet on your system to tell date and time. Hide the clock from menu bar, and set the dock to the left side of the screen, using the command:

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string start

One problem with GeekTool is that you cannot place the mouse pointer at the screen top while watching movies if you have to view time. But you can activate Exposé at a screen corner for that.

4. SlimBattery Monitor

The default battery indicator occupies much space. To counter that, you can use SlimBattery Monitor. Set its icon shape to the horizontal one. Now you can take off the default indicator.

Concluding, these simple steps will help you gain control over those ‘cluttery’ menu bar items. Have you noticed that you don’t use all the items present in the menu bar? These menu bar items are generally present as clutter. How do you manage your menu bar? With these tips, we are sure that your menu bar management would become easier. These tips will save you some space and you can add your apps there.

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