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Submission details

-13 +16/-29 votes

Unable to see icons on menu bar if there are too many

Submitted by hoopla_punta on August 11, 2008 to Annoyance, Icons, Usability

When you switch to an app with a lot of menus, your icons on the right get cut away, never to be found unless you which to e.g. finder, which has less menus.

This also happens when you switch to lower resolutions for projectors and such. And it is quite hard to find where they go. Sometimes even the menu items get lost.

Especially when you want to reach let say Camouflage after your presentation to get something on your desktop, and you don't have a shortcut for it, you are a lil bit frustrated.

Double clicking the apple icon will push another "menu bar" below the actual one. Then you can drag icons into the additional bar, including system ones, by using the "command" modifier. (FYI, did you know that you can reorder system icons, as well as remove them, by command-dragging?) Click outside the "icon bar" will hide it.

This is automatically done if your resolution is less and cannot fit all of them.

You can have the menu bar (or apple icon) alert you (by popping out or glowing) when one of the icons changes to notify something (you can specify which ones, e.g. adium). And it may be possible to reveal it by shortcut or hovering on something.

Medium

Medium

Not fixed

Discussion (10 comments)

DPoint wrote on August 11, 2008, 3:51am

Why so many icons?!
Remove them, if you can't then just uninstall the applications that you don't use for the moment. Problem solved!
Or get a new bigger display: http://store.apple.com/us/product/M9179LL/A?fno...splays&mco=MTI1NzM :D

hoopla_punta wrote on August 11, 2008, 3:58am

Well if you want to keep them there. I need the system icons.

Sopohs Anti-Virus (duh...)
Caffeine(if its not there it won't work.)
InsonmiaX (again it must be there)
Adium (useful for notifications)
YouControlTunes (when i'm listening to music)
Camouflage

So if you're one with as many as me this would be useful.

And yeah, I wouldn't want to invest a $100+++ just to get all my icons there.

asphyxia8489 wrote on August 11, 2008, 12:49pm

@hoopla_punta,

Sopohs - uninstall, you dont need it
Caffeine & Insomnia - why not simply just change the settings in your Power Management
Adium - has a dock badge for new notifications, and you can use Growl for notifications
YouControlTunes - thats a lame use of space, get Coversutra.

hoopla_punta wrote on August 11, 2008, 4:30pm

If you want it there I mean. Some people just want their icons there instead of having to buy new software or putting their computer at risk.

And the sys prefs can solve everything. I do not have the Admin to my mac, and insomnia does things Apple can't.

gianni wrote on August 11, 2008, 8:45pm

I think the current method of hiding icons in favour of app menu items is ideal. I wouldn't want it the other way around.

ByronFortescue wrote on August 11, 2008, 8:57pm

@gianni: Yeah me neither, however, they could add behaviour that when you hover over the menu, the menu-items become visible.. Or the other way around, when you hover over the menubar icons, all of them become visible..

abitgone wrote on August 12, 2008, 5:05pm

IMHO, it's fine as it is - just put the menubar items you 'need' further to the right.

hoopla_punta wrote on August 14, 2008, 2:22pm

@ abitgone its kinda a hassle to do so. You have to quit all the apps and open them in the order you want them.

MicrowaveDave wrote on December 28, 2008, 9:16pm

OS 9 had a little third-party extension called something like 'MenuShrink' which simply condensed the menu bar font if there were too many things in it. It was great but sadly there doesn't seem to be an OS X equivalent.

Doubling the size of the menu bars and allowing two rows works well for the Task bar in Windows but not sure how well it would be received by Mac users.

.Chris wrote on May 13, 2009, 3:54pm

hoopla! you do not need all those icons. you just want them to show off to your friends and be "cool":

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