The menu bar is the place from where you can access various features of an application on your Mac. From the standard menus like File, View, and Window, almost everything that an app has to offer can be accessed from the menu bar. Sometimes, you do not need access to the menu bar, and it becomes a not-so-useful thing and only stays there to occupy the precious real estate of your screen.
At such times what you can do is hide that bar so that it no longer appears to snatch the real estate that an app can work amazingly in. With the release of OS X El Capitan, Apple announced a feature that allows users to hide the menu bar. That way you will not see the menu bar in any of your apps unless you take your cursor there and force it to show up.
While some apps do not show the menu bar when they are in full-screen size, the feature is most useful for your desktop where the Finder menu bar is always present. By following this guide, you should be able to get rid of that bar and get some more space.
Hiding the Menu Bar
You do not need a third-party app as you can do it right from your Mac’s settings panel.
1. Click on the Apple logo in the top-left corner of your screen and select “System Preferences…”
2. When the system panel launches, select the “General” option. This is where you can change the general settings, such as the menu bar settings.
3. On the following screen you should see an option that says “Automatically hide and show the menu bar.” Select the checkbox for it to enable the option.
That is the option that lets you hide the menu bar on your Mac. When it is enabled, the menu bar will no longer appear unless you take your cursor to the top of the app.
4. Exit out of the system panel.
You have successfully hidden the menu bar system-wide on your Mac. From now on, no matter what app you are in or even if you are on your desktop, you will not see the menu bar.
Conclusion
If you do not play around with the menu bar often and wish you could reclaim the space it occupies, you can do so using the above guide.
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Mahesh Makvana
Mahesh Makvana is a freelance tech writer who’s written thousands of posts about various tech topics on various sites. He specializes in writing about Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android tech posts. He’s been into the field for last eight years and hasn’t spent a single day without tinkering around his devices.
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