Menu Bar - Always on...

[cming]

Hi,

had my macbook for about a week (rMB, 8gb, 256gb) - i've played around with MacOS on a VM so not a total noob but still trying to get to grips with 'stuff'.

One thing that is niggling me at the moment is the menu bar - i've googled but can't find out how, if it's possible, to make it always be on display no matter what application i have open after i have pressed the green maximise button. Coming from a windows background i am used to seeing the task bar showing the time, date and battery etc and i;d like to see that on macos but as soon as i maximise the app it 'hides'.

Thanks in advance..

 

[chscag]

Welcome to our forums.

When you maximize the display it automatically hides both the top menu and bottom menu known as the dock. By moving your mouse cursor to the top of the screen you can make the top menu appear and likewise for the bottom menu by moving the cursor to the bottom of the screen. However, in both instances as soon as you move the cursor away, they disappear again.

Instead of maximizing the screen by clicking on the green dot, you can grab hold of the sides of the application displayed and expand it to fill the screen. That will keep the top and bottom menus in place, but of course the appearance will not be as large as doing it the other way.

 

[IWT]

A very warm welcome to our Forums. Thanks for your Post.

There are three buttons top left menu bar.

Red Closes or sometimes Quits an app - it varies between apps.

The Orange minimises the app into the Dock (bottom of Screen)

The Green button has two functions:

1. When you approach it with your cursor, you will see it has two arrowheads. Click on the Green button and this cause you to Enter Full Screen. The Window will now have its own Desktop and the Top Menu Bar disappears as does the Dock at the bottom.

To see the Top Menu Bar, move the cursor to the top of the screen and it will magically appear.

To see the Dock, move your cursor to the bottom of the screen and it, too, magically appears.

To Exit Full Screen, use the Escape Key (esc) on your Keyboard - top row extreme left - OR - move your cursor to the top of the screen to reveal the Top Menu Bar, then Click on View > Exit Full Screen.

2. Still on the Green button - hold down the Option Key and the Green button now shows a cross (+). Keeping the Option key depressed, Click on the button and this will allow you to alter the Window size and dimensions to anything you want, whilst keeping the Window on the same Desktop.

Hope this helps. Any further questions, just ask.

Ian

 

[cming]

Thanks for the replies and the tip about holding down the option key - i came across that the other day when choosing to either copy or move files around in Finder...

Still playing around with different settings and preferences - the dock i am happy to autohide but not sure if i prefer it at the bottom or the right yet :-/

The menu bar - when i realised it disappeared when clicking maximise button i stopped doing that and resized it to fill the screen but retain the menu bar for each of my apps thinking that it would save my preference each time i opened which it seems to do, i feel a bit lost without having all that info visible all the time.

Enjoying the MacOS more than i thought i would - the 2017 macbook is not the most powerful machine but for an m3 with 8gb ram it's fairly nippy, thanks again for fast replies

 

[Slydude]

Welcome to the forums. Hope you find these useful.

You might find this list of keyboard shortcuts useful. I used to have a different list handy but can't seem to find it.
Here's a list of waya to make the option key more useful.

 

[S.SubZero]

Misread the question.

When you Maximize an app, you throw it onto it's own virtual display. The menu bar is only active on one at a time.

 

[toMACsh]

When I hit the green button while holding down the Option key, the window automatically expands to the most efficient size for the app, and the Menu bar remains visible. If I do that again, the window goes back to its previous size.

Without holding the Option key, it goes Full Screen, of course. As far as the Mac is concerned, Full Screen means Full Screen. But some people have complained that this does not include a pixel or two along the entire bottom of the display. As far as I know, you can't cover that.

 

[cming]

@toMACah - Perfect, option key and green button, thanks for taking the time to post