How to Make Time Machine Icon Show in Menubar ONLY when it's Connected

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Level 1

4 points

How to Make Time Machine Icon Show in Menubar ONLY when it's Connected

I'd like the Time Machine icon to only show in the top menubar when I have my external hdd (that stores my time machine backups) connected.

I used to have a 2013 macbook with Catalina, and it behaved this way by default. It was great. The icon was there automatically when I plugged my external backup hdd in, and then disappeared when I disconnected the hdd and I didn't need it anymore.

I recently upgraded to a 2023 macbook pro with Ventura, and it seems the only option is to have the Time Machine icon permanently on or off up there in the menubar. This seems like a step backward!

Is there any way to get back the old, smarter, behavior?

MacBook Pro 13″

Posted on Aug 8, 2023 5:12 PM

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Answer 1

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Top-ranking reply

Libby101a

Level 4

2,392 points

Aug 8, 2023 5:24 PM in response to tomatohorse

You can either turn it on or off. The only icon that disappears when you have your external HD plugged in is the icon that shows on the actual desktop.

I've never known the menu bar Time Machine icon to disappear when the external is unplugged.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

119,088 points

Aug 8, 2023 7:18 PM in response to tomatohorse

tomatohorse wrote:

I'd like the Time Machine icon to only show in the top menubar when I have my external hdd (that stores my time machine backups) connected.

I used to have a 2013 macbook with Catalina, and it behaved this way by default. It was great. The icon was there automatically when I plugged my external backup hdd in, and then disappeared when I disconnected the hdd and I didn't need it anymore.

Is there any way to get back the old, smarter, behavior?

I don't remember it ever working that way. If yours did, I can't explain how.

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Answer 3

tomatohorse Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 9, 2023 5:33 AM in response to Libby101a

Thanks for the reply.

Come to think of it, I also had the desired behavior happen on a second macbook that I had for work . I forget what OS it was running, but that was back in 2016.

Since my personal computer upgrade was straight from Catalina to Ventura, I'm not sure at what point Apple changed this behavior...

I'll go make a feature request for it then.

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Answer 4

tomatohorse Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 9, 2023 5:58 AM in response to dialabrain

Thanks for mentioning Bartender - I had not heard of that before and it looked into it just now (as well as some other free alternatives like Hidden Bar). I think one of those will be a good solution for this! I'll just set it to always be shown in MacOS, but then the manager app will hide it until I choose to show it.