Squeeze more icons into the menu bar by reducing their spacing — via Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac
Commandlow riskmacOS 14 Sonoma and later
On MacBooks with a notch, menu bar icons that don't fit simply vanish behind it. Two hidden settings shrink the gap between icons so more of them fit. Apple doesn't document these keys, so treat it as a power-user tweak.
Sign out and back in
The easy way
- Run the command, then log out and back in.
- The default spacing is about 16. Try other numbers if 8 is too tight.
Command
Run in Terminal (Applications › Utilities).
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 8; defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 8Undo
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing; defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPaddingThe keys aren't set by default, so reading them before you change anything returns an error; that's normal. Jesse Squires wrote them up in December 2023 and 9to5Mac again in May 2026. The values 6 to 8 are about the smallest that still look right.
Sources
- How to stop menu bar items being hidden behind the MacBook Pro notch — by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac
- MacBook notch and menu bar fixes — by Jesse Squires
- Source reviewed
- 2026-11-02
- Link checked
- 2026-11-02
- Tested hands-on
- Not by Oddbyte.Me
Oddbyte.Me hasn't tried this on every macOS version, so keep the undo handy.