How to Hide the Mac Menu Bar in Older Versions of OS X

Feb 24, 2011 - 12 Comments

hide-mac-menu-bar

Want to hide the Mac menu bar? You can do that and set a few more options to automatically hide and show the menu bar with a free utility called MenuEclipse, the end result is pretty similar to the way you can automatically hide and show the Dock. In the screenshot above, I have the menubar completely hidden, but it will activate if I move the cursor over the menu bar.

If you rely on the menu bar often, hiding it from view isn’t the most practical thing in the world, so instead you can give it a subtle shade that automatically dims when it’s not in use. Below is the Mac OS X menu in the dimly “hidden” mode, but it’s still visible:

auto-hide-mac-menubar-off

The effect is actually closer to auto-dimming and auto-highlighting of the menubar, since the menu bar shades and then brightens again when you hover over it with your cursor. Below is the screenshot of when the cursor is over the menubar, which brightens it up to be usable again:

auto-hide-menu-bar-mac-on

You can completely hide the menubar like the topmost screenshot, but it’s not too useful because you can’t reclaim that lost screen space, instead it’s best to just dim the menu bar when not in use.

You’ll have to manually adjust the settings opacity a bit to get things right depending on your choice of desktop background. I find the darker background pictures work fine with hiding it completely, but if you have a lighter desktop background set then just dimming it works best. You do this with the slider as you can see below:

auto-hide-mac-menu-bar

MenuEclipse is a free download available from Xybernic.com, version 1.3 is technically outdated (works fine in Mac OS X 10.6.6+) and there’s a new version available, but the features of the new version didn’t seem that useful to me.

Check out some other ways to customize your Mac.

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Related articles:

Posted by: William Pearson in Customize, Mac OS, Tips & Tricks

12 Comments

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  1. tlfloyd says:

    this never answered the question of HOW TO MAKE IT GO AWAY! even in full screen games it’s still there so i can’t see the score or anything else important!

    • TImg says:

      Put the game into Full Screen Mode if you want the menu bar to hide, that is an option that game developers have to include, but some don’t. It’s not the Mac operating system making that decision, it’s the game developer.

  2. […] Make the Mac Menu Bar Black or just hide the Mac Menu Bar – There are multiple ways to do this, and you can either turn the menubar black with Nocturne […]

  3. DoctorDentist says:

    Where can I find a download for 1.3? Every link I try sends me to a xybernic page saying that it isn’t available.

  4. […] Hide the Mac Menu Bar – There are multiple ways to do this, and you can either hide the menu bar or change the coloring […]

  5. Trench says:

    Stinks that it won’t go for total transparency.

  6. Eth says:

    The menu bar isn’t hidden, technically, just saying. But a very good solution none the less, thanks for the share.

  7. Staunich says:

    Looks nice I like this, and what is your wallpaper? Will you share?

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