Auto-hide the Mac menu bar to gain screen space

On a 13-inch laptop, the menu bar's strip across the top is real estate you could give back to your document or timeline. Auto-hiding it lets windows use the full height of the screen and slides the bar back down only when you push the pointer to the top edge. Set it in System Settings → Control Center → Automatically hide and show the menu bar → Always.

Turn on auto-hide

1. Open System Settings → Control Center.
2. Scroll to Automatically hide and show the menu bar.
3. Choose Always.

The menu bar disappears and your workspace grows by its height. To bring it back momentarily, move the pointer to the very top of the screen — it slides down, then hides again when you move away. The Always option keeps it hidden on the desktop and in apps alike, on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia. The other choices — On Desktop Only and In Full Screen Only — hide it in narrower circumstances if you'd rather keep it in ordinary windows.

Do it from Terminal

# Auto-hide the menu bar
defaults write NSGlobalDomain _HIHideMenuBar -bool true

# Show it again
defaults write NSGlobalDomain _HIHideMenuBar -bool false

This preference lives in the global domain and takes full effect after you log out and back in (or restart), so the Control Center toggle is the quicker route for an immediate change. The Terminal version is handy when you're scripting a new machine's setup.

How much do you actually gain — and pair it with the Dock

The menu bar is roughly 24 points tall, a little more on a MacBook with a notch. It's not a huge slice, but on a small display every row of pixels helps a long web page, a spreadsheet, or a video timeline. Two things make the gain worthwhile:

• Full-height windows. With the bar hidden, a maximized (not full-screen) window and Split View layouts extend to the top edge.
• Auto-hide the Dock too. The Dock eats space at the bottom the way the menu bar does at the top. Hiding both frees a band top and bottom — see the closing tip below.

If reaching the top edge to reveal the bar ever feels slow, remember the menu bar's contents are also available elsewhere: Control Center holds most toggles, and Spotlight (Cmd+Space) covers a lot of what you'd otherwise click up top.

Reclaim the bottom edge too

Hiding the menu bar is half the win. For the matching band at the bottom, see how to auto-hide the Dock instantly and get the full height of your display back.