Use OnlySwitch to Quickly Customize All Your Mac Settings

Apple hides too many things deep in the Mac Settings app. There’s no quick way to do things like toggle dark mode, hide the menu bar, or show hidden files—you’ll have to dig into the settings every time.

However, you can change these settings regularly. I, for example, tend to use dark mode only on cloudy days and therefore prefer to switch it myself. You might want to hide the menu bar and pin it when you need to focus, then turn them back on when you want to chat. Apple doesn’t make it easy to do this on the fly, but there is a solution.

OnlySwitch is a free (donations welcome) and open-source app that lets you quickly change these settings and more, and lets you do things like hide unwanted menu bar icons and prevent your Mac from going to sleep. Open OnlySwitch for the first time and you’ll see a new icon that’s annoyingly close to the Control Center (don’t worry, you can change it in Settings). Click on this icon and you’ll see all sorts of quick switches that you can quickly turn on and off.

Configure the switches

Credit: Justin Poth

Click the gear in the lower right corner to open Settings. In the Settings tab, you can hide any options you don’t want to see and enable some that are disabled by default. These include clearing debris, muting the microphone, and switching to low power mode.

There are built-in replacements for some common apps, such as Pomodoro Timer or Quick Note. There’s also a button you can use to quickly toggle your Mac’s built-in white noise feature. You can even add your own buttons using Apple Shortcuts : just go to the Shortcuts tab and you’ll see all your shortcuts there. All this means is that you can create or find a button to do almost anything on your Mac.

Hide menu bar icons

Credit: Justin Poth

On macOS, you can drag any menu bar icon anywhere you want by holding Control . OnlySwitch adds a special icon that you can use to hide any menu bar icons that you don’t want to see. Simply drag this special icon to the right of all the icons you want to hide and then right-click it. All the icons you don’t want to see are now hidden. Yes, there are dedicated apps for this, including Vanilla and Bartender, but OnlySwitch offers this feature for free and also gives you a quick way to toggle all sorts of other options.

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