What to do with the notch on your MacBook

The notch hides the camera and a strip of menu bar. What macOS does with it, why menus vanish behind it, and how to make it show your day instead.

Guide · Updated 26 October 2026

The notch holds the camera. macOS treats it as a gap in the menu bar: app menus sit to its left, status icons to its right, and when there are too many either side some of them simply go behind it and stop showing.

What macOS already gives you

  • Fewer icons: hold ⌘ and drag menu bar icons off the bar to remove them, so the rest fit.
  • Scaled resolution: a More Space setting in Displays gives the menu bar more room either side of the notch.
  • Menu bar spacing: some people shrink the gap between icons with a Terminal setting; it changes for every app and comes back after updates.

Make the notch useful

Nibbu turns the notch into a small live header. At rest it looks like the notch. When something happens, a song, a timer, a coding agent finishing, a message, it grows a strip with what you need. Hover to peek, click to open your day: calendar, priorities, music, the Mac's health and more.

Menus that the notch hides are listed behind small arrows either side of it, so nothing is lost. See it on this page.

Questions

Can you hide the notch on a MacBook?

macOS cannot remove the notch, but it can be blended into a black menu bar. Nibbu goes the other way and makes it a live header that shows what is happening on your Mac.

Why do my menu bar icons disappear on a MacBook with a notch?

When there are more icons than fit to the right of the notch, macOS hides the extra ones behind it. Remove a few, use a scaled resolution with more space, or use an app that lists the hidden ones.

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