How can an icon/program be hidden in the menu bar?

EMCSD-IT
New Contributor

I am looking to add a program to my student computers- LANSchool Lite- but it offers an icon on the menu bar. Is there a way to hide that icon from kids?

Could this be an integrated option for all programs?

5 REPLIES 5

alexjdale
Valued Contributor III

Good question, we are getting ready to deploy a DLP agent that comes with a menulet, and the developer told us there was no option to hide it (my point being that they could if they wanted to as the developer, but there was no client-side solution available that we could find). If there is something we can do, I'd love to know as well.

davidacland
Honored Contributor II
Honored Contributor II

Hi,

Can you hide it with a config profile?

We've got an example for the vpn menu item here:

https://github.com/amsysuk/public_config_profiles/blob/master/vpn_menu_item.mobileconfig

You normally have to control the com.apple.systemuiserver and specifically the menuExtras array that lists included items.

joshuasee
Contributor III

OS X has different types of icons on the menu bars. Hold command down and click the icon. If it can be dragged, then it is a Menu Extra and can dragged off the menu bar, deleted from the computer, or controlled by a config profile. If you want to find it in the file system, look for a bundle ending in .menu in the Resources folder of the program providing the extra, or in /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/ . If the icon can't be dragged, it is a menu status bar item, and you're likely stuck with it, unless it is created by a secondary app that is not integral to whatever you want to run.

EMCSD-IT
New Contributor

Ill have to look in Config Profile... it would be nice to have an option when installing programs whether it needs to be hidden or not.

bentoms
Release Candidate Programs Tester

It can be app dependent.

Some have nice menu items that can be blocked using the method that @davidacland pointed out.

Others, like Citrix, need a key set in their app's plist.