Boring Old Menu Bar works by changing your desktop wallpaper. It takes a screenshot of your current wallpaper, superimposes a rectangle of the right color then swaps your wallpaper for the new version. Knowing this can demystify what is going on.
There is currently (as of macOS 11.1) a bug where macOS will not correctly change wallpapers if you are using a custom solid color as your wallpaper. Boring Old Menu Bar can therefore not support this configuration and if you want to use it, you need to change your wallpaper to something else.
If you are using Spaces (i.e. multiple desktops / workspaces), each space has its own wallpaper. Boring Old Menu Bar takes around 5 seconds to recognize that you have switched to a workspace that it hasn’t seen before and then takes another few seconds to change the wallpaper. If you switch away quicker, the change won’t stick. Once the wallpaper is changed, it stays changed. The same goes for making apps “full screen”. Wait and it will work.
If you run dynamic wallpapers (e.g. scenes where the lighting changes, etc) or use the slide show options for your wallpaper, read the section on dynamic wallpapers.
On macOS 11.2.1 and later, the Reduce Transparency setting in the System Settings/ Preferences -> Accessibility ->
Display preferences pane, produces this effect. Just switch it off.
Dynamic wallpapers are desktop backgrounds that change throughout the day. Boring Old Menu Bar allows you to automatically update your wallpaper at regular intervals.
Dynamic Wallpaper submenu.Each update will cause the menu bar to become transparent for a few seconds before re-appearing, so how often you want
to update the wall paper depends on how much you mind this. Refresh Once an Hour is probably the best setting for most
people, most of the time.
If you are not using dynamic wallpaper, it’s best to switch the feature off by selecting No Automatic Refresh.
Boring Old Menu Bar can react automatically to changes in:
Again this will lead to the menu bar becoming transparent for a few moments. If you find this annoying you can switch off the feature:
Automatically React to Changes menu item.You can configure this delay. It is set to 3 seconds by default which should work on most setups. If your Mac takes longer than 3 seconds to wake from sleep, this can lead to a black wallpaper being displayed. In that event, you need to increase this delay.
You can manually adjust the menu bar background by using the main on/off switch:
Boring Old Menu Bar works by taking a screenshot of your desktop background and changing it. There are situations, especially if you are running a multi-screen setup with third party displays that take a few seconds to wake from sleep that macOS is still busy waking up the screen and setting the wallpaper, when Boring Old Menu Bar takes its desktop background screenshot.. in which case the background will be pure black.
Starting with version 1.08, the Black Screen Detection is switched on by default and should avoid the problem described above.. but it creates another one.
If you actually run an all-black wallpaper, you need to switch off Black Screen Detection:
Enable Black Screen Detection shows up with a tick next to, disable it by selecting itThis is the worst case scenario for Boring Old Menu Bar. As of Big Sur, there is no API that an application can use to find out which space is showing or even that there are multiple spaces. Each space can have its own wallpaper though. Boring Old Menu Bar works by changing the wallpaper to provide a nice uniform background for your menu bar.. so it needs to change the wallpaper of each desktop individually, but it has no access to this unless you are on that space.
As long as you keep the React to Changes menu item ticked, Boring Old Menu Bar will eventually put a menu bar
background on each of your desktops, so you can just activate it and let it do its thing.
If you want to speed things along:
Through the magic of the Displays have separate spaces preference in Mission Control, you can in fact have a
single menu bar while also having multiple displays connected. In that case, right click the Boring Old Menu Bar icon
and select the display(s) that don’t have a menu bar in the Ignore These Displays submenu.
Give it back! Find out how here.
Boring Old Menu Bar works by changing your wallpaper. Every time it changes the wallpaper there’s going to be a slow “flash” where the menu bar disappears and then re-appears. Depending on your psychological makeup (ha!) this may be more or less annoying to you.
The default settings are chosen to catch all common cases: wallpaper changes, resolution changes, multiple desktops (i.e. “Spaces”), dynamic wallpapers and fairly slow Mac “wake up” times.
Below is a guide to minimize these flashes based on which features you need.
This is the easiest setup by far.
Automatically ReactNo Automatic Refresh in the Dynamic Wallpaper submenuNo flashes!
Automatically ReactRefresh Every Second Hour from the Dynamic Wallpaper submenuOne flash every two hours.
Automatically ReactNo Automatic Refresh in the Dynamic Wallpaper submenuOne flash whenever you wake up your machine.
Automatically ReactRefresh Every Second Hour from the Dynamic Wallpaper submenuOne flash every two hours and whenever you wake up your machine.
To uninstall completely:
Finder, select the Go menu, hold down the Opt key, select LibraryApplication Support folder and find the Boring Old Menu Bar folderBoring Old Menu Bar folder into the trash/ wastebasketnet.publicspace.Boring-Old-Menu-Bar in the Preferences
sub-folder of your Library folder and delete that tooIf things got seriously out of whack, you might still have wallpapers with artefacts on them. If that is the
case, use the System Settings/ Preferences -> Desktop & Screensaver panel to set your original wallpapers.
To re-install, just launch the application.