[corlinp]

Every time I get a new Mac, I run these commands to reduce the spacing between menu bar icons. Lets you fit at least 2x the number of items in the menu bar.

```

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 2

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 2

```

[richardlblair]

This was always my biggest gripe about using a mac, the OS that "just works". I ended up a bunch of commands I had to run and a stack of apps I needed to install for it to feel usable.

[corlinp]

When I set up a Mac I have a short list of things that I need to install. When I set up Windows I have a much longer list of things that I need to un-install. I much prefer the former.

[TheDong]

And when I setup nixos, I have a single command which installs/configures everything.

Windows isn't the alternative if you're on hacker news, OpenBSD and linux are the alternatives.

[miki123211]

To me, it's the difference between caring about productivity and caring about improving productivity.

If you care about productivity and want your computer to "just work", install stock Mac OS (with maybe a utility or two), and you don't have to worry about anything for the next 3 or so years.

If you want to constantly fiddle with configs and spend hours just so things work exactly the way you want them to, sure, go with a BSD or whatever.

No judgment either way, this is a hobby like any other. Some people like to paint, some people like assembling model airplanes, others like building their oS from source and making sure the window is exactly the shade of blue they want it to be. Nothing wrong with any of the three.

[VerifiedReports]

Whataboutism

[daveidol]

Well said!

[al_borland]

The users who run into issues with menubar space would probably be well served to question if they really need all that stuff. The people with the most stuff up there tend to be the same ones who are always complaining about system slowness or weird issues... because they have 2 dozen utilities running in the background that they don't consider, which are all looking for CPU time or trying to change the default behavior of the OS in conflicting ways.

My goal is genially not to have anything running in the menubar that isn't out of the box from the OS. I had a similar desire with the system tray on Windows (though it was more difficult on Windows due to some hardware requiring it).

Work is the only place I have an issue, because they install a bunch of security agents that all want a spot in the menubar, even though they never need me to interact with them or know what they're doing. Those agents sitting up in the menubar tend to be the reason my system has slow downs or issues. Though the slowdowns have gone away since moving to M1. On Intel my fan used to run all the time. Now I'm just left with the weird issues they cause.

[lxgr]

Ah, got it, I’m holding it wrong.

> My goal is genially not to have anything running in the menubar that isn't out of the box from the OS.

My goal is to use the apps I want to use, and if they are exclusively menu bar apps, what can I do about that?

> The people with the most stuff up there tend to be the same ones who are always complaining about system slowness

The cause for system slowness on my mac are too many browser tabs eating 500 MB memory each, not a few 10 MB native Swift apps.

[alsetmusic]

Basically the view I had twenty years ago vs the view I have now. After being a UI-extender explorer for some years, I became a system-as-delivered person. I'm now at a healthy (for me) mix. I have a bunch of icons in my menu bar and an app to keep that tidy.

I agree. My menu widgets aren't the primary cause if my computer feels slow. It's almost always a ton of browser tabs because I collect stuff to investigate later and I procrastinate removing them.

However, I also see the point of the commenter that a lot of people who have a bunch of shit in the menu bar might not be computer people who understand what they are or how they got there. In those cases, people exploring things they don't know how to remove might accumulate a lot of other crap that causes a slow system.

[richardlblair]

I'm not even talking about app icons.

I'm talking about the file manager missing features.

Wifi issues going back years and years.

Default mice settings that make me want to throw the thing out a window. Seriously, who moves their cursor that slow?

The worst window manager I've ever used.

I could go on, but it's genuinely pointless. People love their macs like people love their sports teams. No matter what, some people will always love the maple leafs.

[swiftcoder]

> The users who run into issues with menubar space would probably be well served to question if they really need all that stuff

Look, I don't even want half that stuff, but the reality is that a bunch of tools mandate by my employers, and a bunch of utilities that are needed to make modern MacOS work reliably, all live up there.

A couple of VPNs, DropBox, OrbStack/Docker, eqMac to unfuck volume control on external displays, BetterDisplays and BetterSnapTool to unfuck everything else about external displays... I'm already most of the way to the notch on a 14" macbook

[corlinp]

iStat menus (or the new open source "Stats") is a brilliant use of the menu bar, but it can take a lot of space!

Then couple ordinary services that add menu bar icons that you don't even ask for (DropBox, Docker, Adobe, etc.) and you can overflow onto the notch quite quickly.

[biztos]

I use iStat Menus and I recently got one of those menu-bar expander utilities. It’s so good I forgot its name already!

Now I just click on the chevron whenever I need to access Tailscale or Postgres or CloudFlare or Creative Cloud Dropbox or Google Dropbox or ……

Really solved the problem for me.

[corlinp]

You'll have to get back to us with that name!

[nagaiaida]

okay, i questioned whether i need all that stuff and i've landed on still wanting the same set of capabilities i currently have at the cost of what used to be a reasonable number of menu bar icons.

so now what

[al_borland]

Tame the clutter, by using another menubar app to hide the overflow.

Examples:

https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden

https://www.macbartender.com/

[freedomben]

And for years and years when in discussions about Linux vs Mac, Linux was always slammed as having to be customized and "user's should never have to use the terminal" . (I agree with that, but even in 2014 I remember having to run terminal commands to tweak stuff to make it work more like I wanted to)

[richardlblair]

Ironically I ended up on linux. Windows went to crap, and I figured if I have to run a bunch of scripts to make my OS usable I may as well just use linux.

Honestly, I couldn't be happier. I get so much more out of my hardware and I enjoy the experience so much more.

[bigfudge]

On a laptop? I’m interested but have never found sleep/wake and battery life to ever remotely approach osx and a Mac.

[freedomben]

Many Lenovos and Dells work pretty well. I use a frame.work laptop and it continually gets better. It's not flawless, but personally I accept that the many benefits of using Linux will come with some tradeoffs. To me it's very worth it. Great battery life and flawless sleep/wake on my macbook weren't worth the inferior (IMHO) UX of macos. If you really care about those things, there are some good resources out there (including a good community of frame.work people).

[sosborn]

TBF - It still does "just work," The fact that it doesn't completely fit into your (and my) preferences doesn't really change that, and if that's the standard, then everything will fall short of it.

[oaweoifjwpo]

If the icons are just hidden and you can't find them in order to use the programs you have running, that's not "just working". That's broken functionality. Windows has solved this with the overflow menu for literally decades.

[dangus]

It will not only cut off icons but the menus for applications when they have a lot of them. There is no way to fix it except to change your scaling or connect a second monitor.

I should save this thread for every time someone tries to tell me that Windows is a horrible operating system that is a major reason to not buy a computer when I say things like "The MacBook Neo isn't that good of a deal and you can totally find a Windows laptop in the price range that's built well enough, has similar performance/battery life (or better)/trackpad, and leaves you with more RAM, storage, and I/O."

I've literally picked out laptops that are clearly better buys than the Neo/Air and people will tell me things like "well then you're stuck with Windows" or "but you'll have firmware problems" and then we have to remember that Apple has had plenty of that in their past.

How about those Nvidia GPUs that would fail inevitably in older MacBook Pros?

Or the butterfly keyboard?

Or how they can’t even make window corners that match with the Liquid Glass update?

[odo1242]

Do you have a suggestion for a Windows laptop that’s a better buy than the MacBook Neo? I kinda want a Windows laptop (for being able to run simple games, mostly) but not sure which one

[longislandguido]

Walmart is selling a HP gaming laptop with 16GB RAM and 512 GB SSD for $699—same price as the Neo.

Keep in mind it's not Magic Mac Memory because someone will jump in and tell us that 8GB of Mac memory is clearly superior to 16GB of PC memory because Macs are able to swap and wear down your SSD in the process.

[dangus]

This can depend on what’s on sale in your region. I also have some thoughts about buying at this price range down below.

I’ll shill a website for a YouTuber called bestlaptop.deals. It tracks sale prices and has reviews attached for the laptops, along with categories for use cases. Shopping for Macs less frequently involves big sales but with Windows laptops being patient can pay off.

I’ve seen on recent reviews indicating Windows on ARM has made really great strides, from including support for anti-cheat for many online games. Not every game works but many do without any effort.

I bring these up because the battery life is excellent and many of them are in the $500-600 range.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=f8EbtQ7jQnQ

Yes, that’s a sponsored video, but I’m linking it to show you his commentary on the software situation.

For x86-based computers there are a couple of ways you can go:

Since you mentioned gaming, you can sacrifice some portability and go with something like a Lenovo LOQ. A previous generation unit will cost about $700 and have an RTX 4050, which is enough to beat anything Apple will sell you before you get up to Pro chips. I believe there are other OEMs that may hit that price point with an RTX 5050 which of course will be an improvement.

These systems do get good battery life when you’re in integrated graphics mode. When you’re gaming you’re going to be plugged in regardless of laptop.

Another one I’ve seen on sale lately has been the Yoga 7 14” with either the Ryzen AI 340/512GB storage or the Ryzen AI 350/1TB of storage. I think the sales aren’t as good as were a couple weeks ago. These have a 2K OLED screen, 2-in-1 and pen support, generally good overall systems. The 350 model has significantly better integrated graphics performance so I’d try to stretch for that one.

Finally, in-person I was really impressed with the Acer Aspire 14 AI for being only $530. I did wish the screen was a bit better but the rest of the system was really impressive to be hitting that price.

There was an HP OmniBook I played with in store that had a great aluminum build, though the value wasn’t quite as good. It seemed like it was designed to compete with the Air and felt to me like an Air clone in a way.

I haven’t touched on used, which is obviously an option. There are a lot of options there and I think it’s worth looking into.

I would still say, if you can, spend more than what the MacBook Neo costs. The MacBook Neo isn’t a revolutionary device that changes the game in my mind. Instead, it’s a machine that makes a lot of similar sacrifices that other cheap laptops make. It’s better if you save up and spend more if you can.

For example, you’re interested in gaming, you just missed an amazing sale on the RTX 5070Ti/32GB RAM version of the Zephyrus G14 at Best Buy. It was $500 off, so about $1800 for a really amazing machine that is basically the best thing and light gaming system on the market.

Also keep in mind as I talk about this, I’m biased against 15-16” models. I like 14”.

[devilbunny]

I’m with odo1242, where’s a $700 Windows laptop that has the Neo qualities? I like my Thinkpad - it’s currently my only Windows machine - but it was $1300 or so for the entry-level model (not going to count my add-ons).

I don’t love Windows, but I don’t hate it either. Amazing backward compatibility, and that is not to be ignored.

[dangus]

Yoga 7, check Best Buy, although I think the discount was bigger a few weeks ago.

It’s actually better in many ways: 2K OLED touch screen, convertible with pen support, double the RAM, backlit keyboard, ranks better on battery life for office tasks, a far wider array of ports.

If you stretch to the 1TB model you get the Ryzen 7 AI 350 which beats the Neo on integrated graphics and multi-core processor speeds. You’ll pay a little more but if you need the storage the Neo is out of contention already, and at that price your MacBook Air will come with 256GB.

[cpach]

I vastly prefer Mac over Windows, but I think you have a good point. This is definitely one area where Microsoft found a more reasonable solution.

[xnyan]

> Windows has solved this with the overflow menu for literally decades.

I was a huge Windows fanboy, now completely Apple but this was single most annoying regression of functionality when switching and one of the only things I miss.

[quietsegfault]

I have never seen anyone with enough menu bar icons to have them hide, nor have I known anyone who ran into that problem. It’s a bug that should be fixed, but I just don’t think it’s as big of a deal as it’s made out to be.

[oaweoifjwpo]

Just because you have never personally seen a bug occur doesn't mean it isn't a problem.

This very article is about how Tailscale frequently gets reports of them being hidden.

And I personally have had the icons hidden. My work laptop has a lot of stuff running on it (much of it is mandatory: VPN, custom company processes, Google Drive, etc) and combined with my personal preferred programs (f.lux, etc) it occasionally hits the limit and goes under the notch.

[Kaliboy]

Did we read the same article? It literally drove them to create a new application.

[oaweoifjwpo]

This is the fairly standard Apple defensework where "it just works, but if it doesn't work it's probably not a real problem" despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

[rcakebread]

"nor have I known anyone who ran into that problem"

Why on earth would people tell you that?

[sensanaty]

It only takes like 6 extra apps for items to start being hidden, it's really not that rare of an occurrence.

[inopinatus]

"I don't have any experience with that problem, it follows that no-one has that problem".

[tokioyoyo]

I’ve been solely mac user for the past 15+ years, and have no idea what this thread is talking about. I think, as the other person said, we make assumptions on what’s a problem for others, when in reality, it’s not a big deal.

[longislandguido]

Why does every Mac complaint thread since the beginning of time always feature the "I've never heard of this so it must not be a legitimate issue" guy?

[fragmede]

Ah, but does it work when mice are using the computer, or is it only when humans are.

[packetlost]

Just because you have never hit the issue doesn't mean it doesn't exist. This particular issue will only really show up on notched devices with a small screen and a lot of status bar icons. It's highly dependent on what model mac you run on.

[gehsty]

It doesn’t just work though - icons are hidden from users, with no way of users knowing they are hidden.

macOS is still better than windows, but my feeling is it’s more of a glass of cheap warm whiskey in hell than a cool glass of ice water.

[inopinatus]

That phrase "just works" speaks more to vertical integration than it does to any more specific claim about UX, alignment to preferences, or immediate productivity, and to demonstrate how foundationally this is encoded, you implicitly alluded as much in that opening phrase "a mac, the OS" that directly conflated the hardware and the software.

Frankly, I prefer the mac because there's so little arsing around with drivers. Not out of any blinkered misconceptions about quality, usability, or an otiose love for Apple or their products otherwise.

[longislandguido]

> Frankly, I prefer the mac because there's so little arsing around with drivers

All Windows laptops come preinstalled, there's no arsing about with drivers there either.

Unless you install the bare OS from scratch. Apple bundles the drivers for their hardware with their OS.

Good luck with plugging in anything non-Apple branded or not using standard USB audio or Ethernet CDC and you're 100% having to muck about with sketchy kexts that almost certainly will break in the next OS release.

You can do this for Windows too, that's how most corporate images are built.

One image and 30 different laptop models, that's how it's done in every competently run megacorp IT department. Do you think some poor technician is manually loading drivers onto every Windows laptop?

[JSR_FDED]

> you're 100% having to muck about with sketchy kexts

Apple has replaced kexts (kernel extensions) with a user-space alternative for many years now

[dddddaviddddd]

Hence

> that almost certainly will break in the next OS release

My scanner has drivers available for download that date from 2015 with no updates since then.

[longislandguido]

My solution to this very problem was to virtualize an ancient OS X (was not easy) so I could continue to use a perfectly good scanner.

Though I'm certain you've raised this issue before, and it was met with "I've never heard of anyone needing a scanner, you must be doing something weird, have you tried taking a picture of it with your iPhone(R) instead?"

[cosmic_cheese]

> All Windows laptops come preinstalled, there's no arsing about with drivers there either.

If you’re lucky. One laptop I had in the past (and ultimately returned) had an issue where the vendor-provided NVIDIA drivers were the only ones that allowed its GPU to perform correctly, but were very outdated, which resulted in Windows Update continuously updating them and dragging performance back down. I even tried using the policy editor to lock the drivers in but that failed too because the drivers are split into several pieces and I’d inevitably miss some component, resulting in broken half-updated drivers.

[inopinatus]

> Unless you install the bare OS from scratch

This caveat is doing enough heavy lifting for an Olympic podium.

[alsetmusic]

I'd argue that for most people, the system defaults are fine. They don't have GUI controls / preferences for most of the stuff that power users and the HN crowd might need. However, they provide a path for people at those levels with CLI commands.

I think it's a fair balance. If you're running a bajillion things that add menu icons and you don't also care about computers enough to want to learn more, that's probably pretty frustrating. Most of the people I've met who care a lot about custom software have been curious about going further. Small sample size, just my two cents.

[oneeyedpigeon]

I just wish we could get these settings in nice plain text files so we can version control them and edit them easily.

[saagarjha]

Be glad that you have options at all. They could have not put them in user defaults

[rafaelmn]

You expect someone to ship you an OS personalized to your taste and preferences ?

[jazzypants]

This should clearly be editable in a GUI somewhere.

[drdaeman]

nix-darwin solves a lot of those pains. Not all of them, but it makes initial setup a lot simpler and faster.

[potatocoffee]

This is so much better, thank you for this.

[zhongwei2049]

Been using this trick for a while. It's wild that this isn't exposed in System Settings somewhere. macOS basically treats third-party menu bar apps as second-class citizens and then acts surprised when users are confused.

[e40]

My only gripe, it only seems to apply to the macOS items. The ones put there by apps still seem to be spaced out the same as before. The macOS ones are definitely closer.

[hagendaasalpine]

with nix-darwin you can declare that config:

  system.defaults.NSGlobalDomain = {  
    NSStatusItemSpacing = 2;  
    NSStatusItemSelectionPadding = 2;  
  };

[HaloZero]

Hmmm, is this supposed to do something on OSX 26.3? I tried setting it to 10 and it doesn't seem to do anything? Wonder if there's something new for Tahoe.

[miketery]

$ killall ControlCenter

[swiftcoder]

If you log out/in or reboot it will take effect.

Previously killing SystemUI server was enough to restart the menu bar, but that doesn't seem to do the trick anymore.

[galkk]

Thank you!

Do you have anything else as useful as this? THis is perfect

[corlinp]

Well I suppose I can't miss out on the opportunity to plug my open-source menu bar app for voice-to-text in any app! Going on three years of development, believe it or not.

https://github.com/corlinp/voibe

[swiftcoder]

Dude. How am I only just learning this? This needs to be plastered loudly over the internet

[dwg]

what are the default values, in case someone wants to restore them?

[hn111]

You can use `delete` instead of `write`:

defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing