[mmaniac]

Mac OS has a serious problem with requiring loads of third party extensions to get a usable desktop experience. Most of the time it's merely annoying, but this situation also demonstrates that you're placing a lot of trust in the authors of these programs.

[dewey]

Nobody “requires” these tools to have a “usable” experience. Millions of people are using it just fine without all these tweaks.

[rhinoceraptor]

A menu bar manager only becomes necessary when you have a bunch of extra things installed on your system that each have a menu bar item.

[geekraver]

Or when you have a #$@^$! notch

[eddyg]

Apple is giving you extra pixels, not taking any away.

If you want the same appearance (and resolution) as a non-notch MacBook Pro, open System Settings, go to the Displays section, click Advanced... and toggle on “Show resolutions as list”, save that change, and then enable “Show all resolutions”.

Now select the resolution option just below your current selection. (The y-dimension will be slightly less, which equals the space added by the pixels around the notch.)

[mikl]

Problem was they also massively increased the spacing between menu items, so the amount of menu bar items you can fit before it is a problem has dropped massively from before.

[mmaniac]

I was never bothered by the notch, but this is useful advice that seems to be little known. Thanks!

[BoardsOfCanada]

Does it really? For me, finder is below the level of what's acceptable, so I use a replacement. I also use magnet for arranging windows, but apart from that I find the experience far better than windows or linux. Maybe I'm missing out on some really great extensions, which ones would you recommend?

[mmaniac]

I use SensibleSideButtons and ScrollReverser continually. Those are features which I consider absolutely basic and their omission leaves me cynical.

Rectangle and Contexts are extensions I use to make Mac OS closer to Windows or Linux in comfort, but they're not what I'd consider essential.

An interesting thing happened while I was enumerating the tweaks I had installed. Some of their menu bar icons were hiding under my notch without my even realising! Completely lacking an overflow indication is embarrassingly sloppy, and I might have to grab something like Bartender now too.

[literallyroy]

I’ve found LinerMouse handles side buttons and scrolling well: https://github.com/linearmouse/linearmouse

[hu3]

> Does it really

Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40580566

[BoardsOfCanada]

My situation is similar to `dwighttk` in the comments you link to, I have stats (as in `brew home stats`) showing CPU/GPU/RAM/Network, then the standard macOs stuff + magnet + weekday and full date and time and nothing is ever hidden by the notch when using the built in display.

So - since people DO have a problem - there must be other things that a lot of users want to see but none of them are mentioned in the link.

[hu3]

Perhaps you don't need to organize icons like other users do.

But for us who do, it is clearly essential.

> "Ugh, this sucks. This app was nearly essential on MacBooks with a notch, since you could hide lesser used icons away to make everything fit." - LeoPanthera 13 hours ago

> "True, but it has been essential for a long time before the notch for those of us with a non-trivial amount of software. The menu bar is a popular spot and so many apps want to put an icon there." - Tagbert 13 hours ago

And that's just from a quick glance.

Most users don't even know it's possible to improve their UI with this third party tool. I bet if they knew it would be considered very important to the mas well.

Specially power users who fight with screen space.

[literallyroy]

What finder replacement do you use? I have ended up doing just about everything I can via the terminal as finder feels so unusable coming from windows.

[MrDrMcCoy]

As a Linux user, the only thing I really miss from MacOS is BetterTouchTool.