Menu bar icons hidden behind the notch: how to get them back

If an icon has vanished from the menu bar of your MacBook, it is probably not broken and not really behind the notch. macOS has run out of room to the right of the camera, and it hides any status icon that doesn't fit. The app is still running. You just can't see or click its icon, and macOS doesn't offer an overflow menu to reach it.

The fix is to make room: remove icons you don't need, Command-drag the ones you do need to the right, shorten the clock, or give the menu bar more space with a different scaled resolution. Here is why it happens and how to do each of those.

Why icons disappear on a notched Mac

On a MacBook with a notch (the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air from the M2 model on; which Macs have a notch has the full list), the menu bar is split in two. App menus (File, Edit, View and the rest) sit on the left of the camera. Status icons, the clock and Control Center sit on the right. The notch itself is a fixed gap in the middle that nothing can be drawn into.

That leaves a fixed amount of space on the right, and every app that adds an icon takes some of it. New icons usually appear to the left of the existing ones, so the row grows toward the notch. When the next icon would reach the camera, macOS doesn't squeeze it or cut it in half. It drops it from the menu bar entirely. The ones furthest left, often the apps you opened most recently, are the first to go.

Apps with long menus make it worse. If the app in front has more menus than fit to the left of the notch, they can carry on to the right of it and take room from the icons. That is why an icon can be there in Finder and gone the moment you switch to a big editing or design app.

Check whether an icon is hidden or gone

Before you change anything, find out which kind of missing you are dealing with.

1. Switch to Finder. Click the desktop or Finder in the Dock. Finder has a short menu bar, so if the icon reappears, it was hidden for lack of space.
2. Check the app is running. Open Activity Monitor and search for the app's name. If it is listed, it is running, and its icon has most likely run out of room. If it isn't, the app has quit or isn't set to open at login.
3. Reach the app another way. Many menu bar apps open their settings window if you open them again from the Applications folder. That gets you to the controls even while the icon is hidden.

Rearrange icons with Command-drag

You can move most menu bar icons by holding Command and dragging them sideways. Let go when the icon is where you want it. macOS remembers the order, so it survives a restart.

This matters because of how icons are dropped. The ones on the far left go first, so arrange them by how much you need them:

• Put the icons you click every day on the right, next to Control Center and the clock.
• Put the ones you rarely touch on the left, nearest the notch, so they are the ones that disappear.

To remove an icon, hold Command and drag it down off the menu bar, then let go. This works for Apple's own icons, such as Wi-Fi, Sound or Bluetooth. Whether it works for another app's icon depends on the app. A few items, like the clock and Control Center, stay where they are.

Turn off icons you don't need

Moving icons around only gets you so far. The real gain is from showing fewer of them.

Apple's icons: Control Center settings

In macOS Sonoma and Sequoia, open System Settings > Control Center. The list is in three parts:

• Control Center Modules such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirDrop, Focus, Stage Manager, Screen Mirroring, Display, Sound and Now Playing. These are always inside Control Center, so you can safely set many of them to Don't Show in Menu Bar or Show When Active.
• Other Modules such as Battery, Accessibility Shortcuts, Hearing, Fast User Switching and Keyboard Brightness. Turn on "Show in Menu Bar" only for the ones you use.
• Menu Bar Only items such as the clock, Spotlight, Siri and Time Machine. You can hide the Spotlight icon and still open Spotlight with Command-Space.

The clock is the widest item on many menu bars. Click Clock Options in the same pane: you can set "Show date" to When Space Allows or Never, turn off the day of the week, or switch the style to Analog, which takes up very little room.

In macOS Tahoe, Apple reorganized these settings, and menu bar items have their own Menu Bar section in System Settings. The layout differs from the one above, so look there if you can't find Control Center's list.

Other apps' icons

Most apps that put an icon in the menu bar have a setting for it in their own settings window, often called something like "Show in menu bar". Turn it off for anything you only open once a week.

If an app adds an icon you never asked for, check whether it needs to run at all. Open System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions (just Login Items in macOS Sonoma) and look at the "Open at Login" list. Removing an app there stops it starting with your Mac, so its icon only appears when you open it yourself.

Give the menu bar more room

If you still need more icons than fit, change how much fits.

• Use a scaled resolution with more space. In System Settings > Displays, choose an option toward More Space. Everything on screen gets a little smaller, including the menu bar, so more icons fit beside the notch. The trade-off is smaller text everywhere, so check that you are not leaning in to read. Our guide to making text bigger on a Mac covers the other side of that trade.
• Use an app with fewer menus in front. If one app always hides your icons, switch to Finder for a second when you need one.
• Use an external display. With the default setting, each display has its own menu bar, and an external one has no notch. Icons that are hidden on the laptop screen are often visible there.

An unofficial spacing tweak

There is a long-standing Terminal setting that shrinks the gaps between menu bar icons. Apple doesn't document it, so it may not work on every version of macOS, and future updates can ignore it. It only changes spacing, and you can undo it.

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 6

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 6

Log out and back in for it to take effect. Smaller numbers pack the icons closer together. To go back to normal, run the same commands with delete in place of write and remove the -int 6 part, then log out again.

Where Notchpals fits

Notchpals puts a crew of characters in the notch, each looking after one part of your day, from water and posture to meetings and bedtime. It does need one menu bar icon, a pair of eyes. That is where you pause the crew for an hour or until tomorrow morning, start a focus session or change your crew. If macOS keeps hiding it, Command-drag it to the right like any other icon you want to keep.

Everything else happens in the notch itself, the one part of the top of the screen that menu bar icons can't use. A character slides down out of the notch, shows its line with Later and Done, and slides back up. Blip, the alien who looks after your eyes, comes with every copy, and clicking it while it is out gets a reply.

BlipHello! Did you need me? Or just poking? Both are great!

The eyes are also the quickest way to tell why the notch has gone quiet. They close whenever the crew is holding back: during a call or a recording (any time the mic or camera is on), when a full screen app has taken over the notch's screen, after a couple of minutes with no keyboard or mouse, and while you have paused it. If nobody has visited for a while, a glance tells you whether the crew is holding back or simply has nothing due yet, which is one more reason to keep that icon on the visible side of the notch.