Again, I wish I could apply transparency to the Dock as I like having that transparent Dock. I find this much easier to use in my account. Remember, this was transparent this had a tint to it, now it can easily see all the items. We can see that it’s much easier to see our menu items here. I wish I could apply it to the Menu Bar, but unfortunately, we can only apply to both the Menu Bar and the Dock. When we go down to the Dock, you’re going to see that it no longer has that transparent Dock either. Under Display, there is an option for Reduced Transparency. From here, what we need to do is go to Accessibility it is an accessibility setting. If you want to make it more like the old-style Menu Bar, all you need to do is go up underneath the Apple menu and go to your System Preferences. It’s only in recent macOS versions that this transparency was added.
![mac menu bar settings mac menu bar settings](https://i.etsystatic.com/11640800/r/il/3ab8ec/1782876527/il_570xN.1782876527_lyns.jpg)
#Mac menu bar settings mac#
If you’re coming from an older version of macOS, or if you’ve been using the Mac for a while, you may remember that the Menu Bar had no transparency to it for several years. When we reduce that transparency, it almost makes the Mac look like an older Mac.
![mac menu bar settings mac menu bar settings](https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/12/how-to-customize-menu-bar-mac-os-big-sur-control-center-walkthrough-3.png)
It applies it to both the Menu Bar and the Dock. Well, what we can do is we can reduce that transparency, basically just take it away. Now, again, it doesn’t affect this background that much because it’s a pretty simple background, but depending on the background that you have applied on your Mac, it may make these menu items here more difficult to see. It’s red over here, but when I go over to the right, I click on the Control Center, we can see it as more blue. When we click on a menu item, let’s go ahead and click on File, we can see that we have a transparent background. We go over to the right we have a blue background. We go over to the left here we can see, we have a red background. As I mentioned in the introduction, Apple applied this transparency with macOS Big Sur to the Menu Bar. All the icons are pretty easy to see on the Dock.īut when we go to the Menu Bar, depending on your background, it really can be hard to see our menu bar here. Now, this doesn’t affect the Dock too much. When we go over to the right, we can see it as more red. That’s because the background is turning blue. If we go over to the left, we can see it has a blue transparency or a blue tint behind it. Now, when we’re looking at our Menu Bar and Dock, let’s go down to the Dock first when we’re looking at our Dock, there is transparency. Well, what we can do is we can reduce the transparency, thereby making it easier to read.
![mac menu bar settings mac menu bar settings](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fvQgGGDGOOk/maxresdefault.jpg)
What this does, depending on your background makes it more difficult to see the menu items. Apple has slowly been adding transparency to macOS, particularly with macOS Big Sur. In this video, we’re going to look at how it can make our Menu Bar and Dock more readable by reducing the transparency.