Reduce the Transparency in the Menu Bar and Dock

In this video, we’re going to look at how it can make our Menu Bar and Dock more readable by reducing the transparency. Apple has slowly been adding transparency to macOS, particularly with macOS Big Sur. They made the menu bar more transparent. What this does, depending on your background makes it more difficult to see the menu items. Well, what we can do is we can reduce the transparency, thereby making it easier to read. Let’s see how we do this on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

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. If we go over to the left, we can see it has a blue transparency or a blue tint behind it. That’s because the background is turning blue. When we go over to the right, we can see it as more red. Now, this doesn’t affect the Dock too much. All the icons are pretty easy to see on the Dock.

But when we go to the Menu Bar, depending on your background, it really can be hard to see our menu bar here. As I mentioned in the introduction, Apple applied this transparency with macOS Big Sur to the Menu Bar. We go over to the left here; we can see, we have a red background. We go over to the right; we have a blue background. When we click on a menu item, let’s go ahead and click on File, we can see that we have a transparent background. 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. 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.

Well, what we can do is we can reduce that transparency, basically just take it away. It will no longer be transparent. It applies it to both the Menu Bar and the Dock. When we reduce that transparency, it almost makes the Mac look like an older 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. It’s only in recent macOS versions that this transparency was added.

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. From here, what we need to do is go to Accessibility; it is an accessibility setting. Now, what we do is we go to Display. Under Display, there is an option for Reduced Transparency. All we need to do is just turn this on. Watch what happens when I turn this on. The menu bar is no longer transparent. It looks like an old macOS Menu Bar. I kind of like this.

When we go down to the Dock, you’re going to see that it no longer has that transparent Dock either. I wish I could apply it to the Menu Bar, but unfortunately, we can only apply to both the Menu Bar and the Dock.

Let’s take a look at a menu item. We’re going to go back under File here. We can see that it’s much easier to see our menu items here.

Let’s take a look at my Control Center. Remember, this was transparent; this had a tint to it, now it can easily see all the items. There is no longer any transparency. I find this much easier to use in my account. This is how I have my Mac set up. Again, I wish I could apply transparency to the Dock as I like having that transparent Dock. But for the Menu Bar, I like this look here of no transparency.

Again, to take out that transparency, all you need to do is just go to your System Preferences, and then you go to Accessibility. Under Accessibility, you’re going to see Display. Just click on Reduce Transparency, and the Mac will immediately reduce or remove the transparency on the Menu Bar and in the Dock.

So that’s how you can reduce your Menu Bar’s transparency and your Dock on the Mac.