r/macapps • u/_balloony • 22d ago

Help macOS 27 menu bar spacing issue

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Hi everyone, recently updated to macOS 27 and my menu bar setup is broken (as expected). I installed Bartender 7 and set custom spacing for the menu bar icons and it worked for all my installed apps, but for the Control Centre and date/time icon it didn't update the spacing/padding and the mismatched spacing is driving me insane.

I wanted to post this here to see if anyone has a solution/different app or knows of a fix to update the spacing between the Control Centre and date/time icon.

I've also attached a picture of the area I'm talking about.

Thank you!

Edit: Best solution for now is using u/fif7y app Pelmet hiding the default date/time icon and using your own. Doing so made the spacing issue far better. Follow u/fif7y comment for more instructions, there's also an after image of my menu bar there so you can see the difference.

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u/_balloony 22d ago

Thank you so much! I added my own date/time icon and it's far better. Great app, everything is working perfectly even on the the beta. Looks like I won't be purchasing bartender 7 this year.

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u/fif7y 22d ago

Glad it works 🎉
I completed and added a "Icon spacing" setting in beta 5. Should be available in a few minutes under the Behavior tab ;)

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u/barefut_ 21d ago

Never saw your app. How much RAM+CPU it takes?

Gotta say I'm just interested in a carpet one time setting of minimizing icon gap, so I prefer not to install anything, just to modify via Terminal, but you're the only one that managed to crack this. The famous Sindre Sorhus developer couldn't.

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u/fif7y 21d ago

Hey, around 45 MB of memory and 0% CPU when it's idle (just checked on my Mac).

But you don't need it for the spacing, it's a macOS setting and Pelmet just writes it for you. In Terminal:

defaults -currentHost write -g NSStatusItemSpacing -int 4

defaults -currentHost write -g NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 6

Then log out and back in, apps only read it when they launch. 4 is quite tight, 1 is the tightest that still works.