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Hide the Spotlight icon in your menubar

by David Chartier Jul 14th 2007 at 4:00PM

If you don't like or don't use the Spotlight icon in your menubar, there are a couple of tips at Mac OS X Hints that describe how to hide or simply get rid of it. This first hint that caught my eye while browsing RSS feeds describes a way to 'paint over' the icon. While that sounds like a good idea and all, you still end up with a blank area in the menubar simply taking up space where the Spotlight icon used to be. Fortunately, Rob Griffiths, Macworld Senior Editor and Mac OS X Hints purveyor extraordinare, linked an older tip in the footnotes of this first one that describes how to properly remove the item from your menubar so others can take its place. It isn't a difficult process - you simply remove Search.bundle from /System/Library/CoreServices and restart the SystemUIServer process in Activity Monitor. Instead of deleting that item, however, I would definitely echo Mac OS X Hints in recommending either backing it up or renaming it just in case you change your mind in the future.

Also, this only knocks Spotlight out of the menubar, cutting off your use of the quick 'n easy menu and the more powerful Spotlight window for searching. However, this in no way disables Spotlight across Mac OS X or your applications; you should still be able to run Spotlight searches from the search box in Finder windows and make use of Spotlight in any apps that use it (NetNewsWire, Mail, etc.). I tried this myself and the process went just fine, but I found that I needed to copy the bundle to my Desktop, then delete it from the CoreServices folder. Also, I needed to force quit the SystemUIServer in order for the change to actually take effect. The process restarted itself just fine, and Spotlight disappeared from my menubar. Replacing the bundle (requiring me to authenticate as Administrator) and force quitting the process yet again (oh that poor process) returned Spotlight to its throne in the absolute right of my menubar.

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If you don't like or don't use the Spotlight icon in your menubar, there are a couple of tips at Mac OS X Hints that describe how to hide...
 

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Photo Tim

I have used for a long time "Tiger Tamer" which does this and a number of other things quite well. However, after you run something like Applejack you'll need to run TT again.

As far as moving apps, you can the command key and move some items around.

July 15 2007 at 3:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
marcos

Thank you Aaron. I should also have specified that I'm, allergic to APE. =)

Most of the time I'm really just fine with my 12" screen. But every once in a while, I do some work that requires me to drag out the 22" Cinema Display and afterwards I feel cramped until I forget what having all that real estate is like.

July 15 2007 at 3:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kiff

Thx Aaron, works like a charm.
And I'll follow your advice Explorer :)

July 15 2007 at 3:13 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Explorer

There is a way to move third party apps using Menu Cracker but I don't recommend it.

July 14 2007 at 9:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aaron

7:
Hold down the command key and drag the Date/Time menubar item. This works for all of the apple menubar items (Displays, Airport, Sound, Date/Time, etc) except for Spotlight, and does not work for any third party ones (Delibar, Tagbot, Adium, Skitch, etc)

July 14 2007 at 7:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kiff

To me it is not the worst problem of the menu bar. Does anyone know a way to rearrange the application icons? I accidentally removed date/time and now it won't align to the right anymore...

July 14 2007 at 7:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aaron

You can also use a small app called "Menufela" that I believe works through application enhancer. This application allows you to hide the menubar and to hide the spotlight menu, but if you hit command-space or whatever you have mapped there, the menu will still show up on the right from a mystical region beyond the menubar.

July 14 2007 at 6:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aaron

You can also use a small app called "Menufela" that I believe works through application enhancer. This application allows you to hide the menubar and to hide the spotlight menu, but if you hit command-space or whatever you have mapped there, the menu will still show up on the right from a mystical region beyond the menubar.

July 14 2007 at 5:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
marcos

This is cool, but it's not exactly what I want. But thanks, Dave, just the same.

What I'd like is to have it completely out of the menu bar, but accessible via cmd-space and cmd-opt-space. That would rule!

Anyway, this is only an "issue" (if you want to call it that) on my 12" G4 PB. If/when I move to the wider 13" screen, I doubt it will be as important.

July 14 2007 at 5:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Lucky

btw .. i think I've read this before here. . i might be wrong :)

July 14 2007 at 5:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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