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Hide macOS Tahoe's Menu Icons

read original get MacOS Menu Bar Organizer → more articles
Why This Matters

This article highlights a user-driven workaround to disable menu icons in macOS Tahoe, addressing user dissatisfaction with cluttered and inconsistent menu visuals. It underscores the importance of customization options for a better user experience and signals potential future improvements from Apple. Such tweaks empower consumers to tailor their OS to their preferences, enhancing overall satisfaction and productivity.

Key Takeaways

I really dislike Apple’s choice to clutter macOS Tahoe’s menus with icons. It makes menus hard to scan, and a bunch of the icons Apple has chosen make no sense and are inconsistent between system applications.

Steve Troughton-Smith is my hero for finding a Terminal command to disable them:

Here’s one for the icons-in-menus haters on macOS Tahoe: defaults write -g NSMenuEnableActionImages -bool NO It even preserves the couple of instances you do want icons, like for window zoom/resize.

Your apps will respect this change after relaunching. I ran this a few minutes ago and already appreciate the change. I really think Apple should roll this change back in macOS 27, or offer a proper setting to disable these icons for those of us who find them distracting.