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How to Customize the Control Center and Menu Bar on macOS

How to Customize the Control Center and Menu Bar on macOS

Update: 2025-12-02
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Description

In this episode, Tyler demonstrates how to customize the Control Center and menu bar on macOS.

With macOS Tahoe, the Mac's Control Center and menu bar have become more customizable, with the ability to add, remove, and reorder a greater variety of items.

To add an item to the Control Center or menu bar, click the “Edit controls” button at the bottom of the Control Center dialog, focus on the item you want to add either in the list of suggestions or the “More controls” grid, and choose "Add to Control Center" or "add to menu bar" from the Actions menu (accessed by pressing VO-Command-Space). Note that you can use the search field, or click a category in the “Available controls” group to narrow down what’s shown in the “more controls” grid.

To remove an item from Control Center, focus on it and choose "Remove" from the context menu (accessed by pressing VO-Shift-M). To remove an item from the menu bar, focus on it and choose "Remove" from the Actions menu.

To move an item in Control Center, press VO-Shift-F3 to turn cursor tracking off, focus on the item, route the mouse pointer to it by pressing VO-Command-F5, and mouse down on it by pressing VO-Command-Shift-Space. Then, move to where you want to move the item to, route the mouse pointer by pressing VO-Command-F5, and mouse up by pressing VO-Command-Shift-Space. Note that this may not always work reliably, depending on the positions of controls being reordered.

To reset Control Center to its default layout, go to System Settings > Menu bar, and click Reset Control Center.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Tyler: Hey AppleVisors, Tyler here with a quick tip for how to customize the Control Center and Menu Bar on macOS. With macOS Tahoe, the Mac's Control Center and Menu Bar have become much more customizable with the ability to add, remove, and reorder a greater variety of items. To do this, you'd go into the Control Center and hit the Edit Controls button at the bottom of the dialog. You can also find this button in System Settings by selecting the Menu Bar category and clicking the Edit Controls button in the scroll area. To demonstrate, I'm going to go into Control Center on my Mac with VL Shift O. VL Globe Right, jump to the bottom.

VoiceOver: Edit controls. System dialogue. In system dialogue, content is empty. Drag the controls to place in the control center or menu bar. System has new system dialogue.

Tyler: Okay, so here we are in the edit controls dialog. At the top we have the search field. We can search for a control.

VoiceOver: Available controls group

Tyler/VoiceOver: this is where you can categorize what you see in this dialog. For some reason it jumps down to vision accessibility at the bottom, so I'm going to jump to the top with VL Globe left. All controls selected. Battery, Connectivity, Desktop and Finder, Display and Brightness, etc. Suggestions will depend on what macOS thinks will be helpful based on how you use your Mac.

VoiceOver: Scene or accessory toggle button. Actions available. Alarm…

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How to Customize the Control Center and Menu Bar on macOS

How to Customize the Control Center and Menu Bar on macOS

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