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Guides on tidying up the macOS menu bar.
Menu bar icon missing after restart on a Mac: what to check
A menu bar icon missing after restart on a Mac usually comes down to five separate causes. How to tell them apart in about two minutes, and what to change.
Menu bar icons disappeared on a Mac: how to get them back
Mac menu bar disappeared, or only some icons went missing? A short check for each case, with the System Settings names for macOS Tahoe 26 and Sequoia 15.
Mac menu bar icons duplicated: why two copies appear
Mac menu bar icons duplicated usually means two copies of one app are running, or a stale item was never cleared. How to tell which, and how to fix it.
macOS menu bar icons not clickable: how to get them back
When macOS menu bar icons are not clickable, the item has usually run out of room on screen rather than crashed. Here is how to tell the causes apart and fix it.
Menu bar icons overlap the notch: what macOS is doing
When menu bar icons overlap the notch on a MacBook, macOS is not drawing them behind the camera. It is dropping them. Here is why, and the four ways to get the room back.
Hide the Spotlight icon from the Mac menu bar
How to hide the Spotlight icon from the Mac menu bar in each macOS version, what happens to Command Space afterwards, and why the bar usually stays crowded anyway.
Hide the Steam icon from the Mac menu bar
Where to look inside Steam for a menu bar setting, why quitting the client is not the same as hiding the icon, and what to do on a Mac when an app offers no toggle at all.
Hide the Time Machine icon from the Mac menu bar
Where the Time Machine menu bar switch lives in each macOS version, why backups keep running after you hide the icon, and how to reach Back Up Now and browse backups without it.