Make the Menu Bar never show while in Full Screen

Question

Pretty much every application I use in full-screen (including Firefox, MacVim and the Terminal) have tabs on the top of the screen.

The problem is, when I move my mouse to reach the tabs I'll often accidentally touch the top of the screen, bringing in the OS menu OVER the tabs:

Is there any way to change this behavior? I'd prefer it if the menu bar would stay hidden when I'm using a full-screen app, even if my mouse does touch the top of the screen.

Answer 1

The menu bar can NOT be hidden on command whenever you like to due to limitations in Mac OS X. Apple can do this in their own programs but they have NOT made it possible for other developers in Mac OS X. One of the reasons being that Apple Menu sits on the Menu bar and is helpful if the application becomes unresponsive or if the user needs to log off /shutdown the machine.

There is an application called Menu Eclipse which lets you change the Menu Bar behaviors(except for hide it).

Answer 2

• Save the following AppleScript to a file named fullscreen.scpt:

  use framework "AppKit"
  use scripting additions
  
  repeat with runningApp in current application's NSWorkspace's sharedWorkspace's runningApplications()
      if runningApp's isActive()
          set frontApp to (localizedName of runningApp) as text
          exit repeat
      end if
  end repeat
  
  tell application "System Events"
      tell process frontApp to set isFullScreen to value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window
      if frontApp = "Finder"
          tell process frontApp to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window to not isFullScreen
      else if isFullScreen
          do shell script "lsappinfo setinfo -app " & quoted form of frontApp & " ApplicationType=Foreground"
          tell process frontApp to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window to false
  
          (*fix to make sure the menu bar is not stuck*)
          delay 0.42
          tell application "Finder" to activate
          tell process frontApp to set frontmost to true
      else
          do shell script "lsappinfo setinfo -app " & quoted form of frontApp & " ApplicationType=UIElement"
          tell process frontApp to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of first window to true
      end if
  end tell
  

• From terminal, compile it to an application with the following command:

  osacompile -o "/Applications/Full Screen.app" fullscreen.scpt
  

• Open the Full Screen.app's Info.plist (e.g. vim '/Applications/Full Screen.app/Contents/Info.plist') and add the following to the dict:

      <key>NSUIElement</key>
      <true/>
  

• Add Full Screen.app as an exception in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility.

• Launch Automator and create a new Service.

• Change "Service receives" to "no input in any application".
• Add a Library > Utilities > Launch Application action.
• Configure the action to launch the previously created Full Screen application.
• Save the service as Full Screen and close Automator.
• On System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services, scroll down to the bottom of the list and the just created Full Screen service should be listed there. Associate an unique Command shortcut for it, like Shift+Command+\ or Command+F11 for example.

This creates a shortcut to cause an application to enter full screen while removing the menu bar, or to exit full screen bringing the menu bar back. It provides an alternative full screen shortcut!

For application-specific full screen launchers, check my other answer.

Caveats

There may be some disadvantages and/or misbehavior using this approach:

• It works by setting ApplicationType=UIElement, which causes the application icon not be added/highlighted in the Dock and make the application inaccessible via Command+Tab. The Command+Tab issue was reported in comments, I didn't notice it since I mostly use the Mission Control overview to change between full screen applications.
• It may not behave as expected for some specific applications, I've noticed issues with the Activity Monitor application (which is generally not used full screen anyway) and there's a report on Chrome, which I didn't try since I use Firefox and it works great.

Answer 3

The closest solution I've found is to do as mentioned earlier, disabling "Displays have separate spaces" in Mission Control. This only makes sense in a multi-monitor environment, as the menubar still shows on the primary monitor.

If you make the app "go fullscreen" (click green button), it fills the whole screen, but all other screens go black, and the menubar gets moved to the app's screen. So the solution there is to manually expand the app's edges as far or high as you want. Once upon a time, VMWare had some kind of full-screen workaround that didn't use Apple's full screen mechanism.

Unless/until Apple sees this as a problem that needs fixing, you're going to be hard pressed finding a non-hacky solution. It is so integral to how the operating system works (like the home-button on the iPhone/iPad/iPod).

Answer 4

One possible solution is not to get rid of the menu completely, but actually keep the menu always on (it's not that big), and just get rid of the Dock instead, by doing the following trick.

Go to terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 1
killall Dock

This will make your Dock small. The press ⌘ ⌥ D to hide dock.

Idea stolen from here.