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Updated

How to Change the Spacing of Menu Bar Icons on Mac

With Menu Bar Spacing

On macOS 26 and earlier:

  1. Open Menu Bar Spacing.
  2. Drag the slider to the left to make the gap smaller. The icons of macOS, like Wi-Fi and the battery, change immediately.
  3. For the icons of other apps, click “Relaunch All Apps”, or restart your Mac. The button quits and opens all your apps again, so save your work first. The older version for macOS 15 has no button: it relaunches the apps with menu bar icons by itself.

The setting stays, also after a restart, so you can quit the app, or even delete it. To go back to the normal spacing, open the app, and click “Reset”.

Get Menu Bar Spacing

Customize the gap between menu bar items

Download

Free

Platform
macOS
Requires
macOS 26 or later
Released
July 2024
Privacy
No data collected
Updated
February 2026
Version
1.2.2
Size
4 MB

More about Menu Bar Spacing

Without an app

Menu Bar Spacing changes two hidden settings of macOS, and you can set them in the Terminal app too. On macOS 26 and earlier, run:

console
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing -int 8
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 6

Then log out and log in again. Smaller numbers give a smaller gap. To go back to the normal spacing:

console
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding

The app does the same with a slider, and shows the result at once.

On macOS 27

macOS 27 has no setting for the spacing, hidden or not, so the app and the commands do nothing. To get more space, remove the icons that you do not need: open “System Settings › Menu Bar”, and turn off the items and the apps that you do not use. To keep related icons together, see how to group menu bar icons.

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