Mac Developer Tips » Multiple Monitors, Moving Menu Bar

Apr 28 2008

Multiple Monitors, Moving Menu Bar

Published by john at 7:02 am under System

Working with multiple monitors is a must when doing any serious coding work. Code on one side, output on the other. No more swapping applications from the foreground to background.

Mac OS X make working with multiple monitors a snap: plugin in the secondary monitor, open System Preferences, click on Displays, click on the Arrangement tab and arrange the displays by dragging and dropping. That’s it. In the figure below the larger box is the secondary monitor (larger view area) and the smaller is my laptop.

There is one default setting that I want to mention here that hopefully will save you some time. When you set up an additional monitor the menu bar stays on the original display. Depending on your arrangement, this may be no worry. In my case I wanted the secondary monitor to be the primary display. When working on an application in what is now my primary display, it’s anything but intuitive to move the mouse back over to the laptop display to click a menu item.

I spent some time searching for a tip, trick or hack to fix this little problem, to no avail. I went back into the system settings any number of times looking for a preference setting. I even did a search for a Mac Defaults option to specify where the menu should land. Again, no luck.

Here’s the punch line, the fix was so obvious, it wasn’t obvious. If you look closely at the figure above, notice the second line in the description area…”To relocate the menu bar, drag it to a different display.” Heh, was that there the whole time…??

So here’s the tip: to move the menu bar simply drag-n-drop as you prefer.

Okay, so here’s where I have a question for you. I recently upgraded to Leopard (10.5), and I’m curious if this feature existed on Tiger (10.4)? Essentially I’m looking for an excuse as to why I didn’t see the obvious solution to my question, right in front of me. Maybe you can help me out here :)

27 Responses to “Multiple Monitors, Moving Menu Bar”

# Rich Cavanaughon 28 Apr 2008 at 9:55 am

Here’s a picture of Mac OS 8’s display control panel from 1997:

http://a248.e.akamai.net/7/248/51/586201168293913/www.info.apple.com/images/kbase/58620/58620_1.gif

Notice the “To relocate the menu bar:” part? It’s been there a while :)
# steveon 28 Apr 2008 at 10:20 am

Sorry to say, it’s been that way since at least OS 8.
# johnon 28 Apr 2008 at 11:10 am

Thanks (I think). Bottom line is: “Read the directions” (or perform better searches) :)
# Sebastianon 28 Apr 2008 at 1:53 pm

I don’t work on mac, but it seems nice.
# klauson 28 Apr 2008 at 2:54 pm

Just want to say, that you are not the only one. I was looking for that myself and did not see it until your blog. Thanks.
The problem might be that some things are too simple for smart developers as we are ;-)
# John Don 01 May 2008 at 2:56 pm

Man, I can’t believe how dumb I’m feeling, because I couldn’t figure this out and gave up. I had resigned to having the iMac as my primary display, but this is so much nicer!

And to think the instructions are right there in the text. I didn’t read that either and 2 other guys here in the office missed that also. All developers.

I think the thing that makes this not intuitive is that the toolbar doesn’t highlight when you click down on it to drag but the whole screen does highlight.
# Andrew Hedgeson 01 May 2008 at 3:59 pm

Don’t feel dumb. I think this is just a great lesson to all of us developers about how users don’t read help! Especially on the Mac, where you expect everything to be obvious, if the interface doesn’t afford a certain behavior, it’s totally understandable to miss a feature, even when it’s literally spelled out for you.
# Meon 28 May 2008 at 9:05 am

That feature has been there since at least System 6 in 1989-1990.
# Tomon 24 Aug 2008 at 7:26 pm

It seems so obvious now - Scotch mist! Thanks for posting this.
# Karenon 03 Sep 2008 at 7:35 pm

It’s nice to be able to move the menu bar to the larger monitor … and I do that … but is there any way to have menu bars on *BOTH* monitors? No matter which monitor I set the menu bar to, it is always seems to be on the top of the wrong monitor.
# Dudeon 07 Sep 2008 at 8:32 am

Yo! This SO helped me out today! I laughed my friggin butt off at the intuitive fix! Sometimes, as in my case, it helps to read the fine print. Thanks!
# Pamon 02 Oct 2008 at 2:57 am

Does anyone know how to fix it when your appearance bar disappears from your display? I hooked up my laptop to my projector and lost the appearance bar.
Thanks!
# Mikeon 11 Nov 2008 at 4:14 pm

thank you, thank you, thank you. STARING ME IN THE FACE THE WHOLE TIME!!!!!
# KBon 19 Dec 2008 at 10:47 am

You rock.
# Bammyon 20 Dec 2008 at 5:31 pm

I was totally going to write off Macs (newly converted mac user here) because I couldn’t set up my multiple monitors like I do in Windows XP.

Turns out this is even easier and more intuitive than Windows.

Thanks for the blog, you do totally rock.
# Neilon 09 Jan 2009 at 12:31 pm

So did anyone ever find a way to get multiple menu bars…one on each screen?

I posted this question on a Mac forum ( Newbies/switcher from PC section)
and ended up with loads of unpleasant comments, basically saying how dare I question the way it is in the Mac world if I don’t like the way Apple does it I should go back to Windows/Linux, CP/M
A few helpful comments but basically all very unpleasant, never come across that sort of reaction to a question on how to do something in all my days (since mid 80’s) of computer usage, from CP/M thru Windows/Linux forums and BB’s. Even when speaking to Mac users face to face the reaction tended to be the same….no offers of help…just unpleasant defensiveness that I dare question MAc and “Why do you want to do that anyway”
# melanieon 20 Feb 2009 at 11:19 am

yes this is my main issue. other people have to have this issue too, i can’t be the only one! say i want to run photoshop on one monitor and illustrator on another, right now i have to go back to the first monitor to do anything with the menu bar. why can’t it switch over when i drag the program window to the second monitor? i love macs, but pc’s do this! come on! i just need a way to DETACH the menu bar and move it over, so i have TWO bars…not one. this is so frustrating and really cramping my work.
# Paulon 24 Feb 2009 at 12:24 am

Neil … coincidentally, I actually just read that thread, and then saw your comments about it here. FWIW, I totally agree with you: the negativity and defensiveness was a bit bizarre. No matter what logo is on it, it’s a frackin’ machine. There are many, many things I wish my Mac did better, and this is one of them. So what? Platform holy wars are so tedious.

I am also baffled and frustrated by the menu bar problem. I can’t figure out what to put on the secondary display, because nothing seems useful without the damned menu bar! I’ve spent a good hour searching for clues and answers, and there don’t appear to be any, except maybe using that little DejaMenu application as a workaround.
# Neilon 24 Feb 2009 at 3:47 pm

Thanks Paul, you are right.
Most of this negative attitude seems to come from …….what is the word……Macaholics????? those that have the iPod, iPhone & iMac, and have used PC’s in the past and had bad experiences with them but never recovered.

Here at home I have 2 mates who are defintely Macaholics, always slagging off PC’s They do not know and do not want to know, what a command line or shell is….on a Mac or PC or *nix/BSD system…and nothing wrong with that…..sometimes I wish I did not know :)

As you say they are all machines…alll frustrating ….all good, all with limitations. depending on what you are trying to achieve……..I hate them all equally…they all just suck time

As for this menu bar thing. I am still waiting (5weeks so far) for my Mac Pro to arrive, so while waiting I got impatient and I built a Hacintosh Mac out of a spare mobo and PSU I had lying around….just sitting on the bench with no tower and innards hanging out everywhere….got ethernet running, no USB or sound but that was not important.

So to get to the point ….being playing with this HackMac for a week or so now, and still nothing better than Deja Menu but I will keep looking.
# jewelson 04 Mar 2009 at 3:19 am

I am having a problem with this feature. I have diconnected my external monitor/tv and
my computer still thinks it is connected. how do I kill this process? I think it killing my video card.
I still have the arrange option with an external device connected.
on Mac osx - I upgraded to tiger only
# Benon 30 Mar 2009 at 11:13 pm

i have done all the instructions but can i somehow get the sound to come out of the 2nd monitor? someone help ive tried everything :(
# Neil Pon 31 Mar 2009 at 7:55 am

We must assume here that yo uhave a monitor with built in speakers.
Sound will not come out of the second monitor with just the video cable. You will need to run a second cable from the audio out on the Mac to the ausio input terminal on the second screen.
# Roselleon 21 Apr 2009 at 10:14 am

Oh geez. I’m an idiot. That drove me crazy for the whole day. Thanks for this post, I would’ve probably gone and download something I really didn’t needed.
# Scotton 08 Jun 2009 at 1:00 am

I found a site that helped me with respect to the menu bar for the second monitor.

It’s a program called ‘DejaMenu’ which is free and uses a keyboard shortcut combination to give you a floating menu bar on the specific screen and application selected - I like it…

Here’s the link:

http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/DejaMenu/DejaMenu.html
# Eugene Martinon 22 Jun 2009 at 1:24 pm

For Jewels… always select the option to “mirror displays” in the arrangement tab of the system preferences for Displays before disconnecting your second monitor; then, afterwards, in the same preference dialogue, click on detect displays.
# Georgeon 03 Jul 2009 at 1:53 pm

I agree, I’d love to have a application specific menubar appear on the right monitor for the right application. Or even just mirror the menubar across all three monitors. For now DejaMenu is an excellent work around
# Neilon 03 Jul 2009 at 2:42 pm

Well, hardly excellent workaround, but as good as it is going to get till Apple gets its act together