How to Enable the Hidden Script Menu on Mac

macOS ships with a system-wide script launcher that almost nobody enables, because the switch hides inside Script Editor's settings rather than System Settings. Turn it on and a scroll icon joins your menu bar, listing scripts you can run from anywhere — with a folder convention that can even show different scripts depending on which app is frontmost.

Enable the Script menu

1. Open Script Editor — it's in /Applications/Utilities, or find it with Spotlight.
2. Choose Script Editor → Settings… from the menu bar (Cmd+comma).
3. On the General tab, turn on Show Script menu in menu bar.

A scroll-shaped icon appears in the menu bar at once. The same checkbox turns it back off — that's the entire undo. The neighboring option, Show Computer scripts, controls whether the menu also lists the system-wide script collections Apple stores under /Library/Scripts; leave it off for a menu containing only your own items. This works identically on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

Add your own scripts

The menu reflects one folder: ~/Library/Scripts. Anything you drop there — compiled AppleScripts (.scpt), script applications, even Automator workflows — appears in the menu instantly and runs with a click, no Script Editor window involved. The fastest way in is the menu itself: click the scroll icon and choose Open Scripts Folder → Open User Scripts Folder, and macOS creates the folder if it doesn't exist yet. Subfolders become submenus, so a growing collection stays organized. This is the natural home for the five-line AppleScripts that are too small to deserve an app: resize the front window, toggle a setting, open your standard set of work tabs.

Per-app scripts, shown contextually

The killer feature hides one level deeper. Create ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/, and inside it a folder named exactly after an app — say Finder or Mail. Scripts in that folder appear in the Script menu only while that app is frontmost, at the top of the list. Your Mail cleanup scripts stop cluttering the menu while you're in Safari, and vice versa. Combined with the user folder for the always-available items, you get a two-tier launcher: global tools everywhere, specialist tools exactly where they're relevant — all from a menu most Mac users never learn exists.

Good first scripts

If your folder is empty, three starters show the shape of what the menu is good for. A script that opens your standard working set — two folders, a website, an app — turns morning setup into one click. A window-arranger that tells Finder or your editor to occupy exactly half the screen replaces fiddly dragging. And any long-running task can announce itself:

# save as ~/Library/Scripts/Notify Done.scpt in Script Editor
display notification "Task finished" with title "Script Menu"

Paste that into Script Editor, save it into the user scripts folder, and it's runnable from any app's menu bar forever — no Dock icon, no login item, no app wrapper. That's the Script menu's quiet advantage over heavier automation tools: zero overhead per script. It has real limits — no keyboard shortcuts for individual scripts, no arguments, no scheduling — and when you hit them, that's your cue to graduate a script to the Shortcuts app or a proper launcher. Until then, a folder of five-line scripts behind a menu bar icon covers a surprising share of daily automation.

Everything about the menu is per-user as well — your scripts and the setting itself live in your account, invisible to anyone else who shares the Mac.

Script without the menu

The same AppleScripts run headless from Terminal and cron jobs via osascript — see the osascript command guide for driving apps, dialogs, and system settings from shell scripts.