Enable a Hidden Disc Eject Menu in OS X

If you use a lot of DVD’s or CD’s on a regular basis, you may find some use enabling a hidden disk eject menu item. Once enabled, you’ll have a Finder pull down menu that lists discs, and selecting a disk from the menu ejects it:

• Hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the Go To Folder window, using the following path:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/

• Locate and double-click the menu item named “Eject.menu”

To remove the Eject menu, just hold down the Command key and drag it out of the Mac OS X menu bar.

The Disk Eject menu works in OS X Lion but is probably only going to be useful for Mac owners who have a CD or DVD drive, because it doesn’t seem to show external USB devices in testing. It also seems to be connected to the same eject mechanism of just dragging a disk to the Trash, so if you have a stuck disc it’s probably not going to be as effective as a forced eject.

On a side note, once you’re in the Menu Extras folder you will find a variety of other menu bar items you can add by double-clicking. Most of these are also available by enabling various settings in System Preferences, but Eject seems to be unavailable elsewhere.