macOS Sierra: Rearrange Your Menu Bar

Under Sierra, we have much greater freedom to configure what’s called the Menu Bar; that’s the bar that appears at the top of your screen, containing both system icons (like the clock and Wi-Fi) and icons for third-party programs (in my case, like 1Password, Dropbox, and Cloak).

macOS Sierra Menu Bar

Before Sierra, we could move some of the system icons, but not the third-party ones. Now, nothing’s off limits except Notification Center (the three-lined icon), which has to stay pinned to the right.

Notification Center in macOS Sierra menu bar

Customizing your Menu Bar is really simple. Just hold down the Command key on your keyboard, and then click and drag any icon to rearrange things. So here’s an incredibly exciting screenshot of me moving 1Password next to Notification Center:

Moving 1Password on macOS Sierra menu bar

Weird. That’s weird. I’ve been using OS X/macOS for long enough that having a third-party icon all the way over there is almost…disorienting. But gosh, at least now I have the choice to do so!

8 thoughts on “macOS Sierra: Rearrange Your Menu Bar

  • It is very annoying, that after a reboot I need to rearrange the system icons again. It looks like their new positions are not saved by Sierra. I hope they fix this, because of this and other small problems I’m not going to upgrade my iMac to Sierra yet.

  • I’m with trize2help.

    Bartender2 is the way to go. And I’ve been able reorganise menubar icons in El Capitan and earlier, if I remember correctly ?
    Maybe it’s Bartender stepping in, but I seem to have the memory of being able to do it for the past few OS releases…. YMMV

  • @LV_Doc: I’ve been on El Capitan since it came out. I’ve been able to move 3rd party icons without any problem, using the command key as you describe. They’ve stayed put, as I have arranged them, even upon restarts. Pretty sure I was able to do that even in systems prior to 10.11. I’m not sure how this is a Sierra-specific feature.

    I thought I could rearrange them on El Capitan, too, but I just tested and… I can’t. I can rearrange system icons, but third-party icons do not react if I command-click on them.

  • I’ve been on El Capitan since it came out. I’ve been able to move 3rd party icons without any problem, using the command key as you describe. They’ve stayed put, as I have arranged them, even upon restarts. Pretty sure I was able to do that even in systems prior to 10.11. I’m not sure how this is a Sierra-specific feature.

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