{"id":41380,"date":"2023-12-08T14:42:38","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T19:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=41380"},"modified":"2025-12-16T15:48:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T20:48:52","slug":"mac-menu-bar-icons-and-the-notch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/08\/mac-menu-bar-icons-and-the-notch\/","title":{"rendered":"Mac Menu Bar Icons and the Notch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesse Squires<\/a> (Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

On my 13” Intel MacBook Pro, the icons reached to about halfway across the screen. On the 14” M3 MacBook Pro, ironically a machine with a larger display, at least 3 icons get hidden.<\/p>\n

This “design” (or lack thereof) is so dumb. It is utterly ridiculous to me that this is still how it “works” two years after<\/strong> the introduction of the redesigned MacBook Pro with a notch. How hard could it be to add an overflow menu with a “«” (or should it be “»”?) button that shows the remaining apps and icons that can’t be displayed? This entire situation with the notch is ironic, because the iPhone notch and “dynamic island” are so thoughtfully designed<\/strong> with zero compromises regarding the functionality of iOS. In fact, they actually provide a better<\/em> user experience. Yet on the Mac, how the notch interacts with macOS is laughably incompetent. It is shockingly lazy regarding attention to detail, and results in an outright disruptive and confusing user experience.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Aside from the problem of the icons being hidden, there’s no API for an app to tell<\/em> whether its icon is hidden. NSStatusItem.isVisible<\/code> tells you whether the app or user wants<\/em> the icon to be visible, but it will return true<\/code> if the icon is hidden in the notch—or even if it’s hidden behind a menu title.<\/p>\n

This has caused problems for me because in Sonoma it’s no longer possible for SpamSieve to add commands to the Message<\/strong> menu in Apple Mail. So SpamSieve instead offers its own menu<\/a> that’s visible in Mail. If there are too many icons, I want to be able to warn the user so that they can rearrange them or access the functionality in a different way. The best workaround I’ve found is to get the coordinates of the icon and then use a pile of hacks to try to figure out whether it overlaps the notch or a menu title. The menu title positions cannot be accessed without accessibility permissions, so I have to hard-code them for each localization and hope the font metrics don’t change.<\/p>\n\n

Niléane Dorffer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I feel a bit sad every time somebody asks me how to recover an icon that “disappeared behind the notch.” I still believe people should not have to download a third-party app to deal with Apple’s hardware and software decisions that lead to the notch and its tendency to swallow menu bar icons. macOS should at least have a way to handle an overflowing menu bar. For this reason alone, Bartender is an essential Mac utility that’s easy to recommend to anyone running a Mac.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n