Menu bar Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

TUAW's Daily Mac App: CalendarBar

by Samuel Gibbs (May 2nd, 2011)

For most office-bound people, checking their calendar is one of the biggest chores of the electronic world. On the Mac, we've got many great options for managing calendars, including iCal, but what about a fast way to check your schedule from your desktop? That's where CalendarBar comes ...

HazeOver dims background windows to help you focus

by Samuel Gibbs (Apr 25th, 2011)

Have you ever wished that you could fade out non-active windows in the background, leaving you to focus on the task at hand? HazeOver does just that in a simple and Mac-like fashion. A small utility that runs in the background, HazeOver dims any non-active windows automatically in a smooth ...

Palua allows you to quickly switch between standard and Apple function keys

by Samuel Gibbs (Apr 21st, 2011)

If you're an Apple keyboard or MacBook user, you'll know how useful the F1-F12 function keys can be when mapped to Apple functions such as brightness control, Expose and play controls. But what happens when you need the function keys to behave in a non-Apple mapped way? Sure you can hold down ...

A hands-on look at iStat Menus 3

by Steven Sande (Apr 27th, 2010)

During the summer of 2008, I was using my MacBook Air outside on a very hot (102°F in the shade) day when I noticed that the laptop seemed to have slowed down to the point that it was almost unusable. Fortunately, I had installed iSlayer's iStat, and I was able to tell at a glance that one of ...

SecondBar puts your menu bar on a second monitor

by TJ Luoma (Mar 31st, 2010)

The menu bar is a quintessential piece of the Mac "experience." On the left, it shows all of the menu items for the currently active application; on the right, it shows icons from various menu bar application programs: the date/time, WiFi status, MobileMe sync status, and many, many more. The ...

5 tips for switchers

by Sang Tang (Feb 23rd, 2010)

Every now and then I'll have an "I never knew about that" moment as I come across a setting or nuance in Mac OS X that I never realized existed. Take, for instance, character viewer, which allows you to display a variety of characters in your document. Whether you're a switcher or seasoned Mac ...

What's that menu item mean on my Mac?

by Joachim Bean (Feb 11th, 2010)

Ever since you've started using your Mac, you've been looking at those icons towards the top right of your display in your menu bar. These items can direct to many different things, from connecting to a wireless network, to finding items on your Mac. These items not only can be clicked on to show a ...

Drobo Dashboard can show used/available space

by TJ Luoma (Sep 28th, 2009)

Drobo was a bit of a life-saver for me. Before Drobo I had about 13 different hard drives storing different kinds of data (music on one, video on another, pictures on another, etc). My Drobo let me bring those all together in a very cool way. I just stumbled across a new-to-me feature of the ...

ScreenSharingMenulet fills a gap in Snow Leopard's Screen Sharing.app

by TJ Luoma (Sep 20th, 2009)

Every "point-oh" version of Mac OS X usually brings some small bit of pain, as I find some little utility no longer works. Snow Leopard has been no exception. I had been using the version of Screen Sharing from 10.5.4 because it had some "hidden" features which I liked. Unfortunately those "hidden" ...

Mac 101: Getting to know the menu bar and menu extras

by TJ Luoma (Sep 3rd, 2009)

More Mac 101, our ongoing series of tips for those new to Mac OS X. One of my favorite things to do when I see someone else's Mac is to see what "Menu Extras" they use. Menu Extras live in the menu bar at the top of your screen, over on the far right-hand side. As you add more third-party software ...

Terminal Tips: Disable Spotlight in menu bar

by Cory Bohon (Sep 23rd, 2008)

Are you tired of accidentally opening spotlight by pressing command + space? With this simple Terminal "hack," you can rid your precious menu bar of Spotlight for once and all. Just open Terminal.app (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and type the following command: sudo chmod 0 ...

TUAW Tip: Add date to the menu bar clock

by Cory Bohon (Aug 18th, 2008)

Have you ever wanted to quickly verify today's date, but didn't want to open iCal? Well, you could click on the clock in the menu to get the month/day/year. However, you can also change the layout of the clock to include the extra information such as month/day/year. To do this, open System ...

Mac 101: Eject button in the menu bar

by Dave Caolo (May 22nd, 2008)

If you're using a keyboard without an eject key, say a non-Apple keyboard, an older Apple keyboard or (in my case) a really old Apple keyboard, you're probably missing that eject button. Sure, you can launch iTunes and select "Eject Disk" from the Controls menu, but there's a much easier way. ...

Google Buddy brings searching to the menu bar

by Cory Bohon (Jan 8th, 2008)

Spotlight is great for searching your computer and networked Macs from the menu bar, but what if you want to search the internet also? Well, here comes Google Buddy, which allows you to search Google using the menu bar. There are multiple ways to search using Google Buddy: Simple Search - this ...

Leopard's new menubar is hideous

by David Chartier (Jun 17th, 2007)

I haven't watched the keynote yet, and I've been spending most of my time looking through the other new features of Mac OS X Leopard. After I found that non-transparent menubar mod for Leopard, however, I can't get over how hideous that new menubar really is. I also hate to say it, but Apple's ...