MacOS – way to make the Menu bar show at all times in fullscreen windows

fullscreenmacosmenu bar

I'm new to macOS and I really like the way you can assign a window to be it's own Desktop via full-screening. However, I have an issue with the default way the Menu bar works in full-screen.

I often move my cursor to the top of the screen to click on my tabs in my browsers and editors, and accidentally trigger the Menu bar obscuring my tabs. Other times I'd like the Menu bar to be available at a glance rather than having to trigger it by mousing up.

Is there some setting or application that will force the Menu bar to show at all times for full-screened windows?

It appears I'm not the first to have this issue, but the solutions in this post didn't work for me and based on the comment for the top answer it won't work for anyone.

If there is no way to do this can anyone give me a hint where I can get started writing an application to do this?

PS: Please don't suggest that I simply hold alt when clicking the fullscreen green button or anything else like just resize the window to fill the screen". This doesn't solve my issue because it strips away many of the advantages of fullscreening.

Best Answer

I've been annoyed by this, too, and the simple, yet very, very painful answer is to hold alt ⌥ option and press the green title bar button (which should turn into a + when you hold option/alt)

enter image description here

If this doesn't make it cover the screen, you can finish the job by holding alt ⌥ option and double-clicking a corner to resize the window to fill the screen.

If you make your dock hide by default, this essentially gives you a "fullscreen" program with the menu bar always shown.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Make the Menu Bar never show while in Full Screen

Save the following AppleScript to a file named fullscreen.scpt:

use framework "AppKit"
use scripting additions

repeat with runningApp in current application's NSWorkspace's sharedWorkspace's runningApplications()
    if runningApp's isActive()
        set frontApp to (localizedName of runningApp) as text
        exit repeat
    end if
end repeat

tell application "System Events"
    tell process frontApp to set isFullScreen to value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window
    if frontApp = "Finder"
        tell process frontApp to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window to not isFullScreen
    else if isFullScreen
        do shell script "lsappinfo setinfo -app " & quoted form of frontApp & " ApplicationType=Foreground"
        tell process frontApp to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window to false

        (*fix to make sure the menu bar is not stuck*)
        delay 0.42
        tell application "Finder" to activate
        tell process frontApp to set frontmost to true
    else
        do shell script "lsappinfo setinfo -app " & quoted form of frontApp & " ApplicationType=UIElement"
        tell process frontApp to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window to true
    end if
end tell

From terminal, compile it to an application with the following command:
```
osacompile -o "/Applications/Full Screen.app" fullscreen.scpt
```
Open the Full Screen.app's Info.plist (e.g. vim '/Applications/Full Screen.app/Contents/Info.plist') and add the following to the dict:
```
    <key>NSUIElement</key>
    <true/>
```
Add Full Screen.app as an exception in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility.
Launch Automator and create a new Service.
Change "Service receives" to "no input in any application".
Add a Library > Utilities > Launch Application action.
Configure the action to launch the previously created Full Screen application.
Save the service as Full Screen and close Automator.
On System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services, scroll down to the bottom of the list and the just created Full Screen service should be listed there. Associate an unique Command shortcut for it, like Shift+Command+\ or Command+F11 for example.

This creates a shortcut to cause an application to enter full screen while removing the menu bar, or to exit full screen bringing the menu bar back. It provides an alternative full screen shortcut!

For application-specific full screen launchers, check my other answer.

Caveats

There may be some disadvantages and/or misbehavior using this approach:

It works by setting ApplicationType=UIElement, which causes the application icon not be added/highlighted in the Dock and make the application inaccessible via Command+Tab. The Command+Tab issue was reported in comments, I didn't notice it since I mostly use the Mission Control overview to change between full screen applications.
It may not behave as expected for some specific applications, I've noticed issues with the Activity Monitor application (which is generally not used full screen anyway) and there's a report on Chrome, which I didn't try since I use Firefox and it works great.

MacOS – In Fullscreen, disable auto-hiding Mac menu bar

So it seems someone found a working solution, at last.

First,

close your VMs
Quit VirtualBox

then as root (or sudo ...)

copy the file somewhere as backup, then edit (eg vi) /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/Resources/VirtualBoxVM.app/Contents/Info.plist
and add the line shown in the middle

the line <key>LSUIElement</key> <string>1</string> to be inserted between LSCanProvideIMVideoDataSource and NSHighResolutionCapable

<key>LSCanProvideIMVideoDataSource</key>    <true/>
<key>LSUIElement</key> <string>1</string>
<key>NSHighResolutionCapable</key>          <true/>

save, then start VirtualBox again (I didn't have to log out/reboot).

The VM will not show anymore among the opened apps icons, but you can double click the VM in the VirtualBox to switch to it.

The whole post by Maestro is here.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Make the Menu Bar never show while in Full Screen

Caveats

MacOS – In Fullscreen, disable auto-hiding Mac menu bar

Related Question