How to customize the macOS menu bar (macOS 26 Tahoe)

The menu bar is the one strip of macOS that is on screen all day, and macOS 26 Tahoe changed it more than any release in years: it draws no background of its own any more, and its options moved into a section of System Settings named, at last, Menu Bar. This guide covers what those settings can do first, then what only a third-party app can, so you spend money on nothing macOS already does.

What Apple’s settings can do

Everything in this half is free and built in. Open System Settings from the Apple menu; the sections named below are in its sidebar.

Show or hide the menu bar background

Tahoe’s default is a bar with no background at all: the wallpaper, or the window under it, shows through, and only the text and icons are drawn. If you would rather have a bar again, open System Settings › Menu Bar and turn on Show menu bar background. The bar gets a translucent, blurred strip that separates it from whatever is beneath. Turn it off to go back to the clear look. That toggle is the whole of Apple’s answer to the bar’s appearance; there is no color picker next to it.

Hide the menu bar

In the same section, Automatically hide and show the menu bar has four settings: Always, On Desktop Only, In Full Screen Only and Never. Always gives the top row of pixels back to your windows and shows the bar when the pointer reaches the top edge; In Full Screen Only, the default, keeps it on screen everywhere except in full-screen apps. Always is also the first step to a window that fills the screen without a Space of its own — see how to go full screen on a Mac.

Choose what is in it

System Settings › Menu Bar also decides what is in the bar. Under Menu Bar Controls, Apple’s own items — Siri, Spotlight, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Battery and the other controls — each have a checkbox, some a Show When Active option, and Add Controls adds more; Clock Options sets the date, the day, seconds and a 24-hour display, and Battery Options its percentage. Under Allow in the Menu Bar, every third-party app that puts an icon in the bar has a switch of its own, and turning it off keeps that icon out for good. To rearrange whatever is left, hold ⌘ and drag it.

Light, Dark and the accent color

System Settings › Appearance sets Light, Dark or Auto, which decides whether the bar’s text is dark or light, and the accent color — labeled Color under Theme on Tahoe — which tints selection highlights in menus and controls. Neither picks a color for the bar itself: with the background off it stays clear, and with it on it stays a blur of what is behind it.

Make the bar opaque or higher-contrast

If the clear bar is hard to read, System Settings › Accessibility › Display › Reduce transparency turns it — and every other translucent surface — into a flat, opaque strip: light gray in Light appearance, dark gray in Dark. Increase contrast, beside it, adds outlines. On macOS 26.1 and later there is a gentler step in Appearance › Liquid Glass: Tinted makes glass surfaces, the bar’s background included, more opaque than Clear without turning them solid. The Accessibility › Display page also has Menu bar size, Default or Large, for a taller bar with bigger text and icons.

Icon styles

Appearance › Icon & widget style — Default, Dark, Clear and Tinted — is where people look for the menu bar and where it is not: it restyles app icons and widgets. It is listed here so you do not spend time on it.

Tighten the spacing between icons

This one is for the Terminal. Two hidden defaults set the space between status items and the padding around each; smaller values fit more icons before the notch swallows them. Run defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 8 and defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 8, then log out and back in. To undo it, run defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing and defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding and log out again. The keys have worked since macOS Big Sur; 6 is about as tight as the icons stay comfortable to click.

If the problem is icons vanishing behind the notch rather than their spacing, that is a job for a menu bar manager such as Bartender or Ice, which hide and group icons. The rest of this guide is about how the bar looks, not what is in it.

What needs a third-party app

Apple’s settings decide whether the bar has a background and what it contains. They do not let you choose its color, give it a shape, round the corners of the display, or make it react to anything. That is what Dynamic Menu Bar does: it draws its own layer beneath the bar’s text and icons, so the menus, the clock and Control Center stay exactly as macOS draws them, and everything about that layer is yours to set.

Color: solid, gradient or live

• Solid paints the bar one color of your choice, or one sampled from the screen so it always matches.
• Multicolor blends up to 10 color stops, with an optional gradient between them.
• Hue drift cycles the bar through the colors over time — the rainbow or your own palette, uniformly or scrolling in a direction.
• Live mirrors the screen just under the bar as vertical color bands, so tabs, split panes and gradients line up with it. It samples at 10 to 120 frames a second; 15 is the default and 10 is easiest on battery.
• Fade and Background blur soften any of them: a vertical fade with separate opacity at the top and bottom, or a frosted blur with its own amount.

There is a separate guide to changing the menu bar color on a Mac, and one to making the bar transparent or solid on Tahoe.

Shape and corners

The bar can stay a Full Bar, or split into floating Pills — one following the app’s menus, one the status items — with their own corner radius, inset, padding, border and glass fill. The overlay’s bottom corners can be rounded on either side, and the display’s own corners, top and bottom, can be rounded too, with a radius, color and opacity per corner. (The left pill needs Accessibility permission to follow the menus; the right one works without it.)

Light and music

A thin light beam at the top edge follows your pointer and glows in the sampled color. While music plays, the same edge can become a visualizer — bars or waves, colored from the album artwork if you like, with a progress bar you can seek from. That has a guide of its own: add a music visualizer to your Mac’s menu bar.

A different look for every app

Per-app profiles switch the style, the colors and the hue drift as you switch apps, so Safari and Figma need not share a look. Apps you exclude are left alone entirely — the overlay hides while they cover the screen — and global shortcuts toggle the overlay, the visualizer, the progress bar and the corners from anywhere.

Setting it up

1. Download the app, open the .dmg and drag Dynamic Menu Bar to Applications. It is notarized by Apple, so it opens without a warning.
2. Launch it. The welcome tour starts a free 7-day trial of every feature; no card is asked for.
3. Turn on Live and macOS asks for Screen Recording permission — that is how the app reads the pixels under the bar. The left pill asks for Accessibility permission.
4. Pick a style in Settings › Appearance and, if you want one, a profile per app. Every setting is listed on the features page.

Which approach fits

• You only want the bar readable over a busy wallpaper: turn on Show menu bar background, or Reduce transparency.
• You want the classic bar back: Show menu bar background.
• You want the bar in a color of your own, a gradient, a pill, rounded corners or a music visualizer: Dynamic Menu Bar, paid once after the free 7-day trial, on macOS 26 Tahoe or later.