6

Is there a way to auto-hide the OS X menu bar, like is possible with the Dock?

There was an application "Menufela" that did this for Tiger, but I'm not aware of anything similar for Leopard/Snow Leopard..

I'm almost certain this is (programatically) doable, because in full-screen applications the menu bar is hidden, and reappears when you mouse the mouse is at the top of the screen..

Edit: With the help of Steve Folly's answer, the following code:

[[NSApplication sharedApplication]
     setPresentationOptions:   NSApplicationPresentationAutoHideMenuBar
                             | NSApplicationPresentationAutoHideDock];

..will auto-hide the menubar (and the dock, as mandated by the API), but only for the current application:

When controlling or disabling features of Mac OS X system using SetSystemUIMode the requested behaviors are only in effect while the process which called SetSystemUIMode is frontmost

..close, but not quite there

5
  • apple don't have a hide function available for menu bar, as I know
    – Am1rr3zA
    Oct 10, 2009 at 19:15
  • There's no option in the System Preferences or wherever, but open a video in Quicktime Player X, make it full screen and move the mouse to the top of the screen. That's the behaviour I'd like, and I'm sure there is a way to trigger this globally (via a private Cocoa API or similar)
    – dbr
    Oct 10, 2009 at 19:47
  • 1
    Perhaps this might be better at home over at Stack Overflow?
    – Jasarien
    Oct 10, 2009 at 22:16
  • @Jasarien - possibly. Even though I gave an answer worthy of being on stackoverflow, I suspect dbr was looking for a way to do this via a preference or something similar. Oct 11, 2009 at 10:46
  • Asked a related question on SO: stackoverflow.com/questions/1551453/…
    – dbr
    Oct 11, 2009 at 18:56

4 Answers 4

2

MagicMenu it hides the menubar (and dock) per application and also finder if you wish

1
  • 1
    That's pretty much exactly what I'm looking for! Only problem is, it modifies the Info.plist within the application bundle which means if used on official-Apple applications, they cannot access Keychain.. Many of the applications I use (Finder/Safari/Mail) would become quite annoying without keychain.. Ah well..
    – dbr
    Nov 21, 2009 at 23:55
1

Here's a good starting point: Technical Note TN2062 about Kiosk applications. But this article talks about it SetSystemUIMode being a Carbon API with no Cocoa equivalent.

However, digging a bit further, I found this article for Snow Leopard which describes NSApplication presentationOptions - the Cocoa replacement for SetSystemUIMode.

1
  • It's not a replacement, it's a wrapper that calls it for you. Nov 17, 2009 at 7:11
1

Present Your Apps does it as well: http://www.eternalstorms.at/utilities/presentyourapps/

2
  • Looks perfect, but does this work with the built-in applications that use the Keychain, like Mail? Sounds like it might modify the Info.plist which would make the integrity checks fail and mean Mail/etc couldn't use the Keychain, although I'm not sure
    – dbr
    Feb 23, 2010 at 23:17
  • 2
    That might explain my Keychain troubles of late!
    – terrace
    Feb 27, 2010 at 20:02
1

Very simple, install Menu Eclipse.

1
  • Does this autohide the bar, or dim it? Looks like v1 is a semitransparent overlay, although v2 looks like it autohides also
    – dbr
    Jan 9, 2011 at 1:03

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