macOS 26 Tahoe: Menu bar confuses with double configurability
More than one control center in macOS menubar makes switching difficult. Hard to find what you're looking for when switching.
New menu bar in macOS 26: The plus sign is of central importance.
(Image: heise medien/Mac & i)
With macOS 26, aka Tahoe, Apple has not only polished up the look and feel of its Mac operating system in the Liquid Glass design, but has also tweaked a whole range of operating areas. This also includes the menu bar icons and their controls – and the way in which the control center now works. The changes do not necessarily follow logical principles. For example, there are now several control centers, if you wish, into which previous functions from the menu bar have been moved. All in all, this looks quite chaotic, at least at first. Here are some tips on how to work with it.
What is the menu bar and what is the control center?
As usual, there are two separate areas for menu bar control: the "Menu bar" menu in the system settings and control of the control center via "Edit controls" (at the very bottom of the open control center). If the control center is edited, all windows in the background disappear, and you get a selection menu that includes all possible elements and fortunately has a search function.
Videos by heise
Here you then go to the desired element and click on it, but you can then immediately select whether the element should be placed in the control center or in the menu bar. Some menu bar icons such as Spotlight, WLAN, Bluetooth or Sound are confusingly only controlled via "Menu bar" in the system settings, although they often have a parallel element in the Control Center.
Control Center meets Control Center
A new feature in macOS 26 is that you can link several control centers to the menu bar. As soon as you activate "Edit controls", a plus sign appears in the menu bar. Each new control center can then be filled with its own elements – and, for example, revitalising the shortcuts' menu bar icon that was deleted in macOS 26 by recreating it in the form of control elements.
Interestingly, you can dock as many control centres as you want – or as much space as you have. The icons can also be defined. The second, third, and fourth control centres also look different to the familiar standard control centre and work with the look familiar from iOS.
Empfohlener redaktioneller Inhalt
Mit Ihrer Zustimmung wird hier ein externer Preisvergleich (heise Preisvergleich) geladen.
Ich bin damit einverstanden, dass mir externe Inhalte angezeigt werden. Damit können personenbezogene Daten an Drittplattformen (heise Preisvergleich) übermittelt werden. Mehr dazu in unserer Datenschutzerklärung.
(bsc)
