A constant green dot on menu bar after installing Sonoma

This topic lead me to a workaround: green dot at top right corner of screen - Apple Community

Basically, to get rid of the green dot, open "Photo Booth", fullscreen it, and exit full screen again.

Its not Zoom related. I dont have zoom on my mac, and I still have this dot which drives me crazy since i think somebody has access to my camera. Its a nasty bug if you ask me, makes users feel they are being watched.

As stated by OP and others:

• Green dot is present after upgrade to Sonoma (MacOS 14.2.1 (23C71))
• It is present in upper right, overlapping with time
• It does not show up in a screenshot!
• It is not a single pixel, a proper green circle as in the OP's photo
• It remains there even if I hide the menu bar (by app being fullscreen or otherwise)

Since it was near the time values, I explored changing time settings to see if it forces a refresh of the menu bar. Came upon another interesting bug:

• If I change anything about the displayed time in the System Settings -> Control Center -> Clock settings, it does NOT update in the menu bar (eg: flash the ":" in time, digital versus analog clock, etc)
• If I change something in System Settings -> Control Center -> Date and Time, it updates the menu bar, including any changes I had made in the Control Center

Very odd, and surprising that Apple testing didnt show a dot that's always present on screen!

Here is how it looks with zoom opened

I have mac book pro m1 14".

Do you think 3 indicators enough? I believe we need 5-6 more

I have done more experimentation.

The dot will disappear if you put the machine to sleep via the Finder menu and then revive it. (It remains if you close the lid and reopen.)

After reviving the machine, the green dot will instantly appear when you move the cursor with the trackpad.

(Both of these were conducted with the Zoom app shut down.)

I believe it indicates "Software Updates" available. I installed the latest software updates and the dot is now gone.

just for the reference, here is how it looks:

SupportCommunityUser wrote:

This topic lead me to a workaround: green dot at top right corner of screen - Apple Community

Basically, to get rid of the green dot, open "Photo Booth", fullscreen it, and exit full screen again.

Thank you!! I've had this issue for months and have been periodically returning to this thread (and many, many others) to try and find a solution. This is a solution that works 100% of the time.

For others:

• Rebooting is not a "fix". It's makes the dot go away temporarily. It will come back.
• This dot does not indicate that you have software updates. If you have updates and install them, yes it will go away (temporarily). Why? Because you rebooted your machine.
• This is absolutely not a hardware problem, it's a software bug.
• It's related to use of applications that use the camera (e.g. Zoom). When you exit these programs, sometimes the green dot is left behind.

Thank you for this solution!

Control Center

Click the Control Center icon  to open Control Center, where you can access features you use often, such as AirDrop, Stage Manager, Screen Mirroring, Focus, and more. See Use Control Center.

Privacy indicators, which can be dots or arrows, are located to the right of Control Center. An orange dot  next to the Control Center icon  in the menu bar indicates the microphone on your Mac is in use; a green dot  indicates a camera is in use; a purple dot  indicates the system audio is being recorded; and an arrow  indicates your location is in use. Only one privacy indicator dot is shown at a time. For example, if both the microphone and a camera are in use, you only see a green dot. When you open Control Center, the top of the window may contain a field that shows which apps are using your microphone, location, camera, or system audio. You can click that field to open the Privacy window, which may have additional information (macOS 13.3 or later).

Sonoma 14.2.1 the issue is still there, but it seems like this green dot is moving from top right corner to the middle or vice versa.

Actually I have a led indicator on a notch if camera is on, so I don't know why we need this one on the screen?

More over when you open youtube in full screen it remains, really annoying thing.

Screen with this dot

Screen with Zoom opened and camera used

I think this is a bug. On screens with LED indicators, the hardware LED is turned on when the camera is in use. For other screens, a dot is rendered on screen.

When an external monitor is connected/disconnected, the green activity indicator may get shifted to another screen at an incorrect location.

Take a screen shot with Shift-Command-3. If it does not show up in a screen shot, that it is most likely hardware related with the Screen or Graphics Card being a likely candidate, although that still does not rule out a driver issue that could be fixed with a software update.

Take a screenshot - Apple Support

I recommend trying to ignore it, which I know is difficult. If any hardware is failing, you will likely see other symptoms. I think you can rule out the camera indicator as the green light next to camera is fixed and would not be that far away.

I have seen reports of a green dot in the menubar like from the OP on the top of this page, but not in the location of your screenshot. In all cases, there has not been a resolution provided as the original posters did not seem to update if they had ever resolved the problem and reports of this issue have not been reported by very many users.

No