A Custom Menu Bar on Mac After Windows: Where Everything Moved
On Windows the taskbar takes instruction. It can be moved to another edge, made taller, told which icons to show, told to combine buttons or not, and told what the notification area is allowed to display. Arriving on a Mac with those habits, the strip along the top of the screen looks like the equivalent, and the first ten minutes of trying to configure it produce very little.
Part of that is because the menu bar is two different things sharing one row, and only one of them is adjustable. Part of it is because the jobs the taskbar does are split across two strips at opposite edges of the screen. Knowing which half is which turns a frustrating search into four specific settings.
What custom can mean here
| The intention | Whether macOS supports it | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Choose which system controls appear | Yes | System Settings, Menu Bar |
| Choose what Control Center holds | Yes | Control Center, Edit Controls |
| Reorder or remove individual icons | Yes | Hold Command and drag |
| Reorder or remove app menus on the left | No | Not adjustable |
| Make the bar taller or move it | No | Fixed position and height |
| Add a readout macOS does not offer | Not by itself | A third party tool |
| Change how it looks | Partly | System Settings, Appearance |
Four of those seven are straightforward and take a couple of minutes each. Two are not possible at all, and knowing that in advance is worth more than another hour of searching. The last one has an answer, just not one that ships with the Mac.
The two impossible rows are the ones that trip up Windows switchers specifically, because the taskbar allows both. The menu bar does not move, does not resize, and does not let its left half be rearranged.
The left half is fixed, and that is by design
The left side of the menu bar holds the Apple menu and then the menus of whichever app is in front. Both the first item and the order of what follows are set by Apple, and the documentation for developers is blunt about the first one.
The menu bar in macOS includes the Apple menu, which is always the first item on the leading side of the menu bar. The Apple menu includes system-defined menu items that are always available, and you can't modify or remove it. Source: developer.apple.com, read September 25, 2026
After that come the app's own menus, in a published order: the app menu, then File, Edit, Format, View, any menus specific to the app, then Window and Help. The app name appears in bold, which is how the active app is identified at a glance. Nothing in that sequence responds to a setting, and the reason is consistency. Apple's guidance tells developers to support the default system-defined menus and their ordering precisely so that a command sits in the same place in every app.
This is the biggest departure from a Windows expectation. On Windows, the top of a window belongs to the application and can look like anything. On a Mac, the commands of every application share one strip in a predictable layout, and the price of that predictability is that it cannot be personalized. Anyone hunting for a way to hide a menu they never use is looking for a setting that does not exist.
The right half is where the choices are, and it is the half that corresponds to the Windows notification area.
The system controls, in one checklist
Apple's user guide names the icons at the right end and points at the pane that governs them.
On the right side of the menu bar are icons referred to as status menus. Status menus show the status of things like battery percentage and Wi-Fi, and let you easily take actions, for example, turn on Bluetooth or search with Spotlight. Source: support.apple.com, read September 25, 2026
To customize what appears in the menu bar, go to the System Settings app, click Menu Bar in the sidebar, then select the checkbox next to the controls you want to appear. Source: support.apple.com, read September 25, 2026
That pane covers the controls macOS supplies itself. Icons belonging to installed applications are not listed there, which is the second thing that surprises people arriving from Windows, where one dialog governs every tray icon on the machine. On a Mac each application decides for itself, and its own settings window is where its icon is switched off.
Control Center is the other half of the arrangement, and it works as an overflow area for controls that do not need permanent space.
If there's a control you adjust all the time, you can pin it. To pin a control to the menu bar, Control-click the item and choose Add to Menu Bar. To remove a menu bar icon, hold Command and drag it off the bar. Source: support.apple.com, read September 25, 2026
Control Center itself is editable from an Edit Controls button at the bottom of its panel, where controls are dragged in or out and reordered, and some can be resized by Control-clicking them. Controls that are not shown by default, including Battery, Accessibility Shortcuts and Fast User Switching, can be added there. This is the closest thing on a Mac to deciding what the notification area shows, and the pairing is the useful part: keep the panel generous and the bar itself short.
One detail avoids a wasted search. The small dots that appear near Control Center when the microphone, camera or system audio is in use are part of Control Center rather than separate icons, and they are not something to switch off in a list.
Order is the setting that matters most
Icons on the right are rearranged by holding Command and dragging, and the same gesture pulls one off the bar entirely. That sounds cosmetic and is not, because the right half of the menu bar does not have a fixed amount of space.
When menu bar space is constrained, the system prioritizes the display of menus and essential menu bar extras. To ensure that menus remain readable, the system may decrease the space between the titles, truncating them if necessary. Source: developer.apple.com, read September 25, 2026
When necessary, the system hides menu bar extras to make room for app menus. Similarly, if there are too many menu bar extras, the system may hide some to avoid crowding app menus. Source: developer.apple.com, read September 25, 2026
The two halves draw from one row, the app menus take priority, and the bar's height is fixed at 24 pt, so there is no second row to grow into. Switch from a simple app to one with a long list of menus and icons on the right can disappear. On a laptop with a notch it happens sooner, because the notch removes width from the middle of the same row.
Apple tells developers not to count on their icon being visible at all.
Avoid relying on the presence of menu bar extras. The system hides and shows menu bar extras regularly, and you can't be sure which other menu bar extras people have chosen to display or predict the location of your menu bar extra. Source: developer.apple.com, read September 25, 2026
Order therefore decides which icons survive a crowded moment, which makes Command-dragging the two or three that genuinely matter toward the clock the highest value five minutes available in this whole topic. It is also the point at which most people discover they want more control than dragging provides, which is what a menu bar organizer exists to give.
Adding a readout macOS does not offer
The Windows habit of putting a custom gadget in the tray has an equivalent, and it comes from outside the system. SwiftBar turns a script into a menu bar item, which covers readouts macOS has no control for: a build status, a server response time, a figure pulled from an internal tool.
Add custom menu bar programs on macOS in three easy steps: Write a shell script, Add it to SwiftBar Source: github.com, read September 25, 2026
It is free, distributed through GitHub Releases or with a Homebrew command, and its README states that it runs on macOS Monterey (12) and later. The trade is that each custom item is a script to maintain, and each one takes width from the same row everything else is competing for. Adding three of these is the fastest way to discover the crowding problem described above.
Appearance is adjustable, size and position are not
The look of the bar follows the system appearance rather than having settings of its own.
Tip: You can adjust the look of the menu bar, Dock, and built-in apps under Appearance. Go to System Settings, click Appearance in the sidebar, then choose Light Mode, Dark Mode, or Auto. Source: support.apple.com, read September 25, 2026
Beyond that there is no colour picker, no transparency slider, and no way to make the bar taller or move it to another edge. The text size settings in Accessibility apply to app content, sidebars and the desktop rather than to the bar. Anyone whose real goal is more usable screen space will get further from the Dock settings, where size, magnification and position are all adjustable, than from the menu bar, where none of them are.
Where the third party tools differ from each other
Tools in this category all reduce what is visible, and they differ in two ways worth checking before choosing one.
The first is what happens to an icon while it is hidden. In the simplest designs the icon is pushed out of view and has to be revealed before it can be used, which means expanding the bar, clicking, and reading a menu with the bar sitting open. Others keep the hidden item directly reachable so the bar never has to expand. That difference decides whether hiding an icon solved the problem or moved it, and the comparison page sets out how the direct approach works.
The second is the licence shape, which varies more than the prices do. Bartender, one of the long-standing options, currently offers Bartender 7 as a one time purchase including all updates to that version, Bartender Pro as a yearly subscription with a 14 day free trial, and a Mega Supporter option as a one time purchase with lifetime access. Its own site also notes that Bartender 7 is built for macOS 27, while macOS 26 takes the latest copy of Bartender 6.
That last detail is a general point rather than a criticism. Tools in this category depend on how macOS draws the menu bar, which Apple is free to change in any release, so a major macOS upgrade is the moment to check that whatever is managing the bar still behaves. A one time purchase tied to a version and a subscription that follows the system are two different answers to the same fact, and neither is wrong.
What to change first
Open System Settings, click Menu Bar, and switch off the system controls that are not used. Then Control-click the ones consulted rarely and move them into Control Center instead, and Command-drag what remains so the important icons sit nearest the clock. If the bar is still full after that, the constraint is width rather than a missing setting, and Koffret is what handles it.
Frequently asked questions
Can the menu bar be moved to the bottom of the screen or made taller?
No. Its position and height are fixed, and the height is 24 pt according to Apple's own guidance for developers. The Dock is the strip that can be moved and resized, in System Settings under Desktop and Dock, which is usually what someone arriving from Windows is actually looking for.
Which part of the menu bar is the equivalent of the Windows notification area?
The right end, where the status icons and Control Center sit. The left end, with the Apple menu and the app menus, has no Windows counterpart because on Windows those commands live inside each window. Launching and switching applications happens at the Dock, which is the closest equivalent to the rest of the taskbar.
Why is an installed app's icon missing from the System Settings list?
Because that pane covers only the controls macOS supplies. An application that puts its own icon in the bar governs it from its own settings window, and most such apps offer a switch to run without one. Apple's guidance asks developers to let the person, not the app, decide whether the icon is there.
Why do icons disappear when a different application comes to the front?
Both halves of the menu bar share one row of pixels, and Apple's documentation states that the system prioritizes app menus and may hide status icons to make room. An application with many menus pushes icons off the bar, and switching to a simpler one brings them back. On a laptop with a notch the effect starts earlier.
Is it possible to put a custom readout in the menu bar?
Yes, with a third party tool rather than a system setting. SwiftBar turns a shell script into a menu bar item, is free, and its README states that it runs on macOS Monterey (12) and later. Each custom item competes for the same width as everything else on the bar, so a few of them make the crowding question urgent rather than academic.