Menu bar icons hidden behind the MacBook notch? Here’s the fix

Installed an app, but its icon never showed up in the menu bar? On a MacBook with a notch, macOS hides any menu bar icon that doesn’t fit to the right of the notch. There’s no warning and no overflow menu. Here’s how to get them back.

1. Remove the icons you don’t need

Hold Command and drag a menu bar icon down off the bar to remove it, or sideways to reorder. Many system icons (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sound) can be turned off in System Settings › Control Center, since they also live in Control Center.

2. Use a menu bar manager

Ice (free, open source) and Bartender (paid) hide rarely used icons behind a single toggle, so the ones you need always fit.

3. Tighten the spacing

macOS leaves generous space between icons. You can reduce it in Terminal:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 6
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 6

Log out and back in to see the change. To undo it:

defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding

4. Shorten app menus

Apps with long menus push into the notch from the left. Select an app in Finder › Applications, choose File › Get Info and tick Scale to fit below built-in camera if the menus collide with the notch.

5. Move things into the notch instead

A lot of menu bar icons only show status: what’s playing, a timer, a download. A notch app such as peeq puts that status beside the notch, where nothing else can go, so you can drop those menu bar apps altogether.

Get early access to peeq, or read what a notch app is.