Reduce menu bar icon spacing to fit more icons

[Andreas_Hegenberg]

This is not really BetterTouchTool related, but I feel it is useful to many - especially if you have a Macbook with a Notch that constantly keeps hiding menu bar status items.

You can show significantly more menu bar status items / icons by reducing the spacing between them. You don't need an app to do that, you can just run these terminal commands:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 0
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 0
killall ControlCenter

Change the 0 to any spacing value you want to try.

[Benjamin_Bini]

@Andreas_Hegenberg

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing

How do we rollback to default values?

[Andreas_Hegenberg]

To reset:

defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding

killall ControlCenter

[tobias]

This is great @Andreas_Hegenberg

On a similar note, is there any way one can also adjust the left & right margins of menu bar buttons?

For example, I have this Menu Bar Item that runs JavaScript to fetch the latest price of ETH.

This is how it looks in the Menu Bar:

And here is the config:

Currently, there doesn't seem to be such an option to reduce the margin / padding of menu bar items?

Thanks

[Alex4]

Could you please share the preset that displays the latest price of ETH, if it doesn’t contain any sensitive information? Thank you!

[Andreas_Hegenberg]

@tobias could you check whether that margin issue is resolved in 5.337 alpha? (uploading now). I will very soon allow to place floating menus into the menubar, that will make it much more configurable.

[tobias]

Sure, please find the file here:
eth_menu_bar_icon.bttpreset (9.5 KB)

It's running the following script:

(async () => {
  
  const coinsToLoad = ["ETH"];
  const currenciesToLoad = ["USD"];
  
  async function fetchCrypto(coins, currencies) {
    const fsyms = coins.join(",");
    const tsyms = currencies.join(",");
    const cryptoCompareURL = `https://min-api.cryptocompare.com/data/pricemultifull?fsyms=${fsyms}&tsyms=${tsyms}`;
  
    const response = await fetch(cryptoCompareURL);
    const json = await response.json();
  
    const currentPrices = [];
  
    for (const currency of currencies) {
      for (const coin of coins) {
        currentPrices.push(json["RAW"][coin][currency]["PRICE"] + " " + currency);
      }
    }
  
    return currentPrices;
  }
  
  const resultPrices = await fetchCrypto(coinsToLoad, currenciesToLoad);
  const result = resultPrices.map(x => `${parseInt(x.replace(' USD', ''))} $`);
  
  returnToBTT(result.join(" | "));

})();

[tobias]

Thanks @Andreas_Hegenberg I'm now running version 5.339. It looks like the outside margin is now working for me However, I'm still wondering if there is an option to control the inside padding of the menu bar icon / item?

This is how the menu button looks with the new version. There is still some extra padding inside the button. Is there any chance that could be further reduced? I've drawn two red lines in the below screenshot to indicate where the button could end instead.

I assume the icon itself also takes up a bit of extra horizontal padding, but perhaps one could include a padding and/or margin option in the Common configuration of Menu Bar Icon / Items?

WDYT?

[Andreas_Hegenberg]

unfortunately at the moment this is using a standard macOS status bar item button - it doesn't offer any such customization options.
However once I allow floating menus to be added to the status bar, this will be possible.

[Alex4]

Thanks very much

[James_I_Porter]

The reset to default commands are not working for me.

[Andreas_Hegenberg]

you need to restart all menubar apps and control center for them to apply (or restart your Mac)

[ztonguk]

Thanks for these commands! Really useful on a Macbook with Notch and too many menubar icons. Apple should make it easier to configure. Or a solution for Notch covering items.

[Anurag_Kashyap]

Does the menubar spacing still works on MacOS 27? I thought they killed it? @Andreas_Hegenberg

[Andreas_Hegenberg]

as far as I currently know this is no longer possibe on macOS 27. You can however use the "Show / Hide Menu Bar Status Items Left Of Specific Item" action to quickly toggle visibility of items.

[withLinda]

Hi Andreas, in the Golden Gate (MacOS 27), the "Double click main menubar" to activate "Show / Hide Menu Bar Status Items Left Of Specific Item" action is not working for me, i'm already using the latest BTT version, why is that?

[Andreas_Hegenberg]

your menubar seems to be very full, did you actually find an empty space to double-click? (it seems to work fine here)

[withLinda]

@Andreas_Hegenberg I have empty space there, and double clicking that empty space doesn't trigger the hiding, that's weird, do I need to allow some permission setting again after installing the new Golden Gate MacOS? or is there any new MacOS settings that i need to set?

[Andreas_Hegenberg]

can you try to re-select the icon? The menu bar status item management has completely changed for golden gate. Possibly try to delete the action and add it again.

[withLinda]

I removed and re-added it, then restarted my MacBook, and then i try switched the trigger to a keyboard shortcut, still no luck.

FYI, my macbook is quite old, the M1 (2020), i really hope this "Show / Hide Menu Bar Status Items Left Of Specific Item" action would work for this Macbook.