Comments on: Customizing your menu bar, arrange, remove, and add menulets

By: David

David — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:03:53 +0000

Brilliant. Thank you so much. Exactly the info I needed – both to move menulets around and to remove redundant icon.

By: Francois

Francois — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:12:15 +0000

@ Marilyn : Go to Preferences > Keyboard Preferences > Select “Show Keyboard and Character Viewers in menu bar”.

By: Scott Haneda

Scott Haneda — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 06:56:25 +0000

@ notchfiend have you tried holding the command key, clicking on the menulet, and moving it left or right? If that does not work, you will need to contact the developer of the menulet/application, as it was not made in a way that allows it to be moved.

This may not be something the developer can solve, depending on the way their application was made, what version OS you are using, and a few other factors that have to do with legacy applications.

For example, even a modern app such as DropBox will not allow me to move it’s menulet position. However iStatMenu3 allows me to move any of the many many menulets that is creates.

By: notchfiend

notchfiend — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:39:49 +0000

I don’t want to remove third-party menulets. Rather, I would like to adjust them in order in most used. Is there a way to do this, too?

In the past, I just used to close the corresponding applications and then opened them in the order I wanted. Is there a method similar to the one you described?

By: marilyn

marilyn — Sun, 29 May 2011 13:06:42 +0000

How can I add an item to the menu bar? ie. ” SPECIAL CHARACTERS”

By: Dex

Dex — Thu, 26 May 2011 23:56:56 +0000

Thanks! Really great web sight! Great help!

By: PJL

PJL — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:30:06 +0000

@Scott Haneda When inserting a PC Card in a MBP the PC Card icon usually appears on the Menu Bar and it offers the option of powering off the card no matter what the function of the card. These cards are usually Plug ‘n Play without a System Preference.

By: Scott Haneda

Scott Haneda — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 23:49:34 +0000

@PJL If there is a System Preference for your PC card, there may be an option in there to disable it. If not, this may be one of those third party menu icons that can not be disabled.

By: PJL

PJL — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:37:28 +0000

I would like to permanently remove the PC Card icon from my MBP Menu Bar. It is a memory card and the boot drive is on it and I do not want to “Power Off” the card accidentally. (I can drag it off but it comes back on restart.)

By: mike

mike — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:48:31 +0000

thank you so much for the info about the hidden menulets. ive been searching all over for them.

By: Scott Haneda

Scott Haneda — Sat, 22 May 2010 22:38:32 +0000

Hi @rick

Yes, that person icon is the icon for “Fast User Switching”. In order to have it show up in your menu bar, a few conditions need to be met. First is that you have more than one user account, second is that fast user switching is enabled.

Open your System Preferences, click on “Accounts”, and in this window, you will see your list of users on the left. Below that list is a house icon with the words “Login Options”. Click on “Login Options”, click the lock icon and authenticate, and check off the “Show fast user switching menu as: Icon” checkbox.

The reason we have that icon in most of our screen shots is that I use one account for my main day to day use, and have a clean account that I use to take screen shots in for OS X Help posts.

My main account is far too customized and would not match what most users are expecting to see on their systems. In order to help show users examples that are as close to their system as possible, we keep a second account that can be wiped clean and started new at any time we feel we have messed it up too much and made the settings too far from default.

Hope that helps, let us know if that is not the setting you were looking for.

By: Rick

Rick — Sat, 22 May 2010 21:56:14 +0000

Many of the screenshots of the menu bar show a person which I’m assuming is a menulet to change users. How can this item be added to the menu bar? I’ve tried double clicking the User.menu icon in the Menu Extras folder, but the person doesn’t show.

By: Scott Haneda

Scott Haneda — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:42:24 +0000

@Another Galen
Perhaps easier for our users, would be to:
Applications->Utilities-> A

Then Show Processes in there, select the relevant one, and force quit it. This may be simpler than the terminal.

By: Another Galen (believe it or not)

Another Galen (believe it or not) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:04:00 +0000

Not pretty to do this, but if you can’t drag, etc. the 3rd party icon out and have no other way to get rid of it, you can rip out the process that it represents:

If you know the name (maybe you used Activity Monitor), or even if you don’t, run: Applications->Utilities->Terminal

in Terminal, type:
ps -ax | less

or if you want this in a file:

ps -ax > procs.txt

This should give you a complete list of all processes, _including_the_path_ to the process.

Find the one that represents the process and delete it (at your discretion and own risk).

By: doris perovich

doris perovich — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:17:04 +0000

cant get slider bar at bottom to move from side to side

By: José Emiliano

José Emiliano — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:16:16 +0000

I’ll not bet with you.
You won, as usually.
PGP 32 bit – not 64. That’s it.
Thanks a lot for the lesson.
Emiliano

By: Scott Haneda

Scott Haneda — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:21:45 +0000

@Jose, right clicking invokes the contextual menu item, which are “plug-ins” for lack of a better word, stored in ~/Library/Contextual Menu Items for your home, or /Library/Contextual Menu Items for System wide all users.

I would bet your PGP CMM is only 32 bit, and can not run under Snow in 64, so it is not loading.

According to http://na.store.pgp.com/desktop_home_mac.html there is support up to 10.5, not 10.6.

There page states:

The current version of PGP Desktop Home for Mac OS (9.10) is not supported on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Support for Mac OS X 10.6 will be available in the next major release of PGP Desktop Home (10.0). If you would like to be notified when the Beta version of PGP Desktop Professional becomes available, please register at http://www.pgp.com/developers/beta/request.html. If you have questions about PGP products and Mac OS X 10.6, please visit our support site https://pgp.custhelp.com/app/.

If you are just looking to securely erase files, you can use Secure Empty Trash.

By: José Emiliano

José Emiliano — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:33:50 +0000

Scott, till now, all questions are about the right side of menu bar.
I’m having some problems as to the left side. When I right clicked on a folder or on a file a drop down menu gave me an option (among many others) to “Shred” . (I’m a PGP user).
After upgrade to “Snow” this option has elapsed.
I’m still using the PGP’shred but throught a more complicated way. That lost option was also enabled on Menu Bar > Edit…but no more now. Is there anything that I can do?

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 07:02:38 +0000

great work, really helpful. Thank you.

By: Scott Haneda

Scott Haneda — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 20:40:02 +0000

@Jason, to be honest, the method in which you set up the time and date in OS X is a bit of a pain, and will not get you entirely where you want to be if you want a specific customization.

I have also found, at times, badly written apps can use the format internally within their app, which can cause those apps to have strange behavior.

I have found iStat Menu’s to be invaluable. Not only does it give a super simple way to modify the date and time menu item, it gives you a drop down calendar, network data, CPU usage, and much much more. Of course, you can turn off all but just the date and time features.

Take a look, I find this to be a very valuable tool http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatmenus/

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:36:49 +0000

Just trying to get the date to show up a long with the time. I’ve got the day of the week, just not the date.

BTW – This is an incredible site. I JUST switched over to Mac yesterday. I couldn’t figure out how to move some picts off of a CD. Today, after going through a bunch of feeds (starting @ #1) I’m feeling like I’ll never open up my other pc notebook again. Thanks!

By: Scott Haneda

Scott Haneda — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:10:31 +0000

@Jason, have you looked at the Date and Time Preference Pane? Or are you looking to do more customizattion to the format that is shown in the menu?

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:55:38 +0000

I tried the International tab to get the date to show up but was not successful. Suggestions?

By: Florie

Florie — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:20:26 +0000

Scott, when you were talking about moving the sound-adjustment gizmo, I wondered why you didn’t mention the two keyboard keys with the speaker symbols – much quicker to get to.

Do you have anywhere on this site a list of all of the Mac keyboard shortcuts? That would be great.

By: Scott Haneda

Scott Haneda — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:01:41 +0000

@Galen, I am not aware of any way to do so.