There is too much MENU and not enough BAR

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Level 1

24 points

There is too much MENU and not enough BAR

My Menu Bar is not wide enough to display all the information that it has at the same time. At least that is what seems to be happening.

The right side of the menu bar has enough icons to fill more than half the width of the screen on my 15" MacBook Pro Retina display Mid 2015. That is all good until I open an app that has too many headings on the left side of the Menu Bar. When that happens, the app menu covers the menu bar icons.

For example Numbers has 10 tabs that extend to the center of the screen. This covers 5 icons from the right side of the menu bar. For me to access these icons requires two strokes or more.

Is there a way to accommodate the apps' tabs and the activity icons no matter how many tabs the app has? The whole idea is to be able to see all the tabs and icons without clicking.

Thanks to anyone who has an answer.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.7

Posted on Dec 29, 2023 11:48 PM

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Answer 1

leroydouglas

Level 10

200,604 points

Dec 30, 2023 6:00 AM in response to Eastrade

Eastrade wrote:

My Menu Bar is not wide enough to display all the information that it has at the same time. At least that is what seems to be happening.

The right side of the menu bar has enough icons to fill more than half the width of the screen on my 15" MacBook Pro Retina display Mid 2015. That is all good until I open an app that has too many headings on the left side of the Menu Bar. When that happens, the app menu covers the menu bar icons.

For example Numbers has 10 tabs that extend to the center of the screen. This covers 5 icons from the right side of the menu bar. For me to access these icons requires two strokes or more.

Is there a way to accommodate the apps' tabs and the activity icons no matter how many tabs the app has? The whole idea is to be able to see all the tabs and icons without clicking.

Thanks to anyone who has an answer.

Remove icons on the right side that are NOT necessary for your day to day existence... There is no work around.

use the Command key to drag off.

Most App will have have a settings to not include the icon in the menubar.

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Answer 2

Eastrade Author

Level 1

24 points

Dec 30, 2023 5:59 PM in response to leroydouglas

Thanks for the tip. Many of the icons could not be removed from the menu bar. The ones that could are ones that I use daily.

However, I was able to rearrange the order of the icons in the menu bar.

Now the ones I need regularly are visible no matter what app I am running.

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Answer 3

Eastrade Author

Level 1

24 points

Dec 31, 2023 9:49 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

My use of the word ‘tab’ may be misleading. Rather than try to describe what I mean by it, here are 2 screenshots. The difference between them is the problem that I was dealing with.

The Mail screenshot shows all the app icons that I want to use that appear on the right side of the menu bar. Two of them go beyond the center of the screen.

The Numbers screenshot shows all the tabs that Numbers uses. They go up to the center of the screen and obscure 2 of the app icons that appear in the Mail screenshot.

Regarding my use of ‘tabs’, Mail has 9 tabs, and Numbers has 11 tabs. Users have no control over how many of those tabs appear in the menu bar.

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Answer 4

Dec 30, 2023 7:04 PM in response to Eastrade

[in my opinion] the menubar is no place for tabs for Numbers.

Surely there is a better way to keep track of open windows in Numbers.

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There is too much MENU and not enough BAR

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