El Capitan: Hide Your Menu Bar!

So as you may know, we’ve long had the ability to hide and show the Dock automatically within System Preferences > Dock.

With that setting on, your Dock will disappear until you drag your cursor to its location, when it’ll pop back into view. For a lot of people, this is a handy way to reduce screen clutter without giving up any functionality.

Well, within El Capitan, we can now also hide and show the menu bar at the top of the screen. To turn this on, visit System Preferences > General and toggle on “Automatically hide and show the menu bar.” 

If you’d like, you could also try the other checkbox shown above—“Use dark menu bar and Dock.” This option came along with Yosemite, and some folks find it easier on their eyes. I personally think it’s a bit…er…ugly.

No offense or anything, Apple.

Anyhow, when you turn on “Automatically hide and show the menu bar,” it’ll move up and out of the way but will reappear whenever you move your cursor to the top of the screen. This is another way to reduce visual distractions and just get to work if you’re into that sort of thing.

After having that menu bar visible for so long, though, I’m getting all disoriented by how that looks. Where’s my battery indicator icon? Who am I? Where are my shoes?

I think I may need to turn my menu bar back on, guys. I’m not good with change.