Get Rid of Bartender and Other Menu Bar Apps

Since having a notch on my MacBook, I cannot fit all the icons in my menu bar.

I’ve tried heaps of apps to make it work: Bartender, Ice/Thaw, and Hidden, but they all had subtle bugs.

Turns out, there’s an easy way to avoid using these apps by shrinking the spacing and padding of the menu bar items, and now I don’t need any of these apps!

From the terminal, type

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 2
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 2
killall ControlCenter

(You can play around with -int 2 and see what works best for you!).

To undo and go back to normal, type

defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding
killall ControlCenter

It’s a bit crammed, but it’s bug-free.