While staring at my Menu Bar today I thought to myself, there’s got to be a way to move those icons around. I tried the ol’ faithful drag with no luck. Then, as only a true keystroke freak would attempt, I began testing out modifier keys. I began with the normal keys. ctrl… alt… aha! The Apple key did the trick :)
If you feel the need to rearrange your menu bar icons, then simply hold down the command key, click on one of the icons, and drag it to a new position. Neat huh? If you have other menu bar icons from applications like Quicksilver, You Control: Tunes, or Visor you’ll immediately notice that this trick doesn’t always work.
There are two types of Menu Bar icons, the built-in OS X menu bar icons and 3rd party application icons. You may use this trick to rearrange the OS X icons among each other. However, you cannot move the OS X icons into the 3rd party application icon territory. I should also note that you cannot move the Spotlight icon either.
At some point in time you may want to clean up your menu bar a bit and remove any unused icons. The command + drag trick also works for removing icons. Just hold the command key down and drag the icon off the menu bar. You’ll see a small puff of smoke appear as the icon is removed, similar to what happens when you remove an icon from the dock. Be sure that you only remove icons that you really want off your menu bar, because there is no way to easily undo this. If you make a mistake or change your mind you’ll have to go poking around the System Preferences to find the option to turn the icon back on again.
I don’t know how I didn’t run across all this sooner. I’m sure there are long time Mac users that still don’t know this simple trick! I guess that’s why I’m here :)
