The number of icons in the macOS menubar (to the left of the clock in the
upper-right corner) can be quite large, especially in the presence of the
notch. While you can use something like
Bartender (Update 6/2024: Looks like Bartender was bought and the new
owner may
be shady. Some alternatives that I've not used include Ice,
Hidden Bar or Dozer.)
to wrangle these, I find it works as well just to reduce the spacing between
icons so more can fit.
First, you can check whether you've already set some custom values:
defaults -currentHost read -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing
defaults -currentHost read -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding
These will likely error if you've never set them.
You can tweak these values with these calls, modifying the value as desired:
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 12
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 8
Log out and back in to see the results.
To restore the values to default, delete the custom settings:
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding
Log out and back in again.
I've tested this only on macOS 14, Sonoma.
Source: https://www.jessesquires.com/blog/2023/12/16/macbook-notch-and-menu-bar-fixes
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