Q: Menu Bar Icons Missing

I forced quit the system iu server process, and when it restarted all was well again.

Thanks a heap macjack, I have had this problem for a while now and I followed your instructions and the problem was solved I now have my actives back.I will remember this one for future referance.

Oh and by the way, Im running Mavericks. So the tip workes on the latest OSX as well.

Thanks a million.

I know this is a bit old now but I would say the very first thing to do is to go   /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/ and check the names of the files. OS X can rename the menu files and then they will not work. For example somehow my clock.menu got rename disableclock.menu. This happend to Timemachine, Volume and some other vital icons. I tried anything and everything I could to try to find the problem. It wasn't till I decided I would try to copy my clock.menu from a working mac to the one that was having issues that I noticed it somehow got renamed. I went in changed it back and BAM! all I had to do was check and uncheck the item I wanted back and it was all good. Hope this helps someone.

Hi

This solved my problem of the disappearing icons. I'd tried terminal commands and everything else I could think of, but the By Host folder was the key! Thank you!

I do not have a ByHost folder?????

... so what now?

Shut down your computer and then turn it on again. Works for me to fix a lot of strange temporary bugs including this new disappearance.

nope.  shutting down and/or restarting did nothing.

Just wanted to add a possible solution for this issue that won't require re-setting any preferences; basically if macjack's solution would have worked for you, this will too, you won't lose any menu bar preference settings and you won't even have to log out.  If you've already tried logging out and back in, or rebooting, and that didn't work, this will not work for you either so don't waste your time trying it.

Anyway, I keep a ton of stuff running and recently lost my right side menu bar items (clock, sound, networking, eject, etc).  They were still there, because if I put my mouse over where they should be and clicked, I'd get the functionality, I just couldn't see them.  Logging out is a painful operation for me because I have to restart everything I keep running.  I simply instructed the SystemUIServer.app to reload and then my items came back like normal.

Here's what you do:

1. Open a terminal / command prompt.  You can do this by pressing ⌘-Space and then typing "terminal" and hitting enter.
2. You'll end up with a command prompt and cursor.  Type (or cut and paste) the following and hit enter:  ps -efww|grep UI|grep SystemUIServer.app
3. The above should have given you a list that looks like this:
   
   # ps -efww|grep UI|grep SystemUIServer.app
     501 57145     1   0  7:48AM ??         0:00.42 /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/MacOS/SystemUIServer
     501 57165 43517   0  7:50AM ttys001    0:00.00 grep SystemUIServer.app
   
   
   
   
4. The line that has the full path to the SystemUIServer.app is the one we want.  The second number is the process ID, in my case, 57145.
5. Type the following:  kill -HUP 57145    (obviously substituting 57145 for your computer's process ID for the SystemUIServer.app)
6. That will instruct the process to restart and reload its config.  My invisible menu items came back immediately.

Hi,

This is going to sound really weird, but I made the icons reappear simply by toggling between full screen and standard view.  

I read all solutions you are proposing here. Seems that we need to many movements to fix just some icons displaying. I hope Apple will fix this in nearby feature. I have second version of Mac OS with this icon bugs, even with up-to-date programs.

I tried the safe start and reboot idea and it didn't work. I have been using Onyx: go to Parameters-->finder and on the bottom is an extras menu: choose whats missing… BAM menu goes crazy. I'll get nine wifi icons and three clocks and my cmd+shft+3 back with whatever still fits, which is most in the finder but not in the apps I want-- still better than missing the native menu item… the FIX is-- I loaded a free App named: AccessMenuBarApps 2.4. from MacUpdate.com-- I don't think that did anything but it is what I did BEFORE I threw away my: com.apple.systemuiserver.plist RESTARTED-- Still no native menue items. Opened Onyx (also free from MacUpdate, this is a really cool app, especially if you are not comfortable with Terminal-- play with it some other time). I skip the scans it wants to do every start up every time) I added each item one by one and I finally have a normal menu bar after at least 10 months.

OSX 10.8.5

2.5GHz Core i5

16GB DDR3

512 GB Samsung SSD