How to Customize Dock and Menu Bar on Mac (macOS)?

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Renaming the Dock section in System Preferences

Chapter “System settings” named Dock now bears the name “Menu Bar and Dock”. Therefore, from now on, all the tools corresponding to the title of the section are collected in one convenient place.

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Appearance of the updated Dock-panel and menu bar

Open the app “System Settings” using the icon in the Dock or the Apple icon in the menu bar and select the section “Menu Bar and Dock”.

Along with the customization options, Apple has made a few changes to the look and feel of each tool. Dock-panel has become even more translucent. And the menu bar has become a little wider and also more transparent. In addition, you will see that the words in the menu bar become darker or lighter to match the desktop background.

And context menus for icons in the Dock and drop-down menus for items in the menu bar have also received a slightly updated look.

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Customizing the Dock

Make sure section is selected in the left column “Menu Bar and Dock”.

Using the slider at the top of the settings window, you can adjust the size of the Dock panel, there you can also select its position on the screen, the animation option for minimizing windows, and configure other settings: automatic minimization and display of the Dock.

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Application shortcuts in the Dock

If you’d rather put your own shortcuts to settings or apps in the Dock, that’s still possible. And if you click on the divider in the Dock, you can drag and drop to resize the entire panel. You can also right-click the separator to perform actions such as turning on the collapse effect and repositioning. You will also see an option in the context menu that will take you directly to the settings in System settings → menu bar and Dockabout which it is written above.

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Menu bar customization

In the same area System settings → menu bar and Dock at the bottom, under the settings of the Dock itself, you will see an option to automatically minimize and show the menu bar. Remember that this setting is now located here.

To customize items that only appear in the menu bar, scroll down the left side of the settings window. In chapter “Menu bar only” choose Clock, Spotlight, Siri, or Time Machine. Currently, the last three items give you the option to display these items in the menu bar by checking the box. The watch offers several additional features, which you can see in the panel on the right.

In the case of the Clock, you can also display the date, set up options for displaying it, select the desired clock type and enable a convenient function “Pronounce Time”.

The rest of the items on the left sidebar can also be added to the menu bar if desired. Just choose one of them and check the box “Show in menu bar”. This is perfect for the features you use on a daily basis.

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Menu bar shortcuts

Do you prefer to place your own shortcuts in the menu bar to better organize your work? This is still available, and you can still easily remove unused items from the menu bar. Holding down a key ⌘Cmddrag the icon from the menu bar and release.

But that’s not all! Now that Apple has introduced Control point on Mac with the same look and feel as Control point on iOS, you can use it to place icons in the menu bar.

Open Control pointusing a distinctive new icon in the menu bar.

Select and drag an item from it to the desired location on the menu bar and release. Everything is very simple!

As in previous versions of macOS, hold down the ⌘Cmd to drag icons in the menu bar to change the order of their location.

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