Say goodbye to the transparent menu bar
Written on October 30, 2007 by Josh Pigford and 11 people have commented

One of the biggest complaints made by new Leopard users is the semi-transparent menu bar. Depending on what wallpaper you have set on your monitor, it can get pretty funky up there.
It was bound to happen sooner or later, but barely 3 days after Leopard’s release we now have a simple app that changes the menu bar to solid white.
OpaqueMenuBar from Eternal Storms seems to just simply put a white bar over the menu bar. The only negative thing I found was that on dual-monitors it puts the white bar across both monitors instead of just the “master” monitor that has the menu bar.
OpaqueMenuBar is free for the taking.

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#1 Jeff says:I can see where the transparent menu bar might not suit everyone’s taste, but personally, I like the new look.

#2 Tom von Schwerdtner says:I’m with Jeff, though options are always nice.
It’s certainly not as bad as the above image makes it out to be, that is from a dev build, correct?

#3 Tom von Schwerdtner says:Nevermind, it does seem to be as bad as the image indicates with brightly colored backgrounds.

#4 Michael says:Hello.
I have a question about the transparent menu bar.
I successfully installed Leopard on my Power Mac G4 Firewire Dual 1.25 ghz.
Leopard is running great on my computer and I have not found any problems.
My question is; the menu bar in my Leopard install never installed the transparent menu bar. The menu bar is the same as in Tiger.
Does this mean that there is a problem with the install, or is this an issue with the model of the Mac?
Any insight appreciated.

#5 Josh Pigford says:@Michael: That is indeed odd. I’d suggestion posting about your issue in our community where more folks will most likely see your question.

#6 mikeinaz says:@Michael, If your computer doesn’t have enough horsepower to support the fancy animations and effects, you won’t see it.
I installed it on my 12″ Powerbook and it’s not transparent either.
I have it on my MacBook Pro and it’s transparent. Personally, I like the new look. But don’t really miss it on my Powerbook, as overall, it seems snappier.

#7 bryanS says:Alternatively, you could just edit your desktop image to include a small white band at the top equal to the dimensions of the menubar. Technically the menubar stays transparent but it’s transparent on top of a white band so its a white menu or slate menubar or whatever solid color menubar you want.

#8 Galley says:I never noticed the transparent menu bar at first, but I had a background image that was black at top. I switched on the rotating image option, and now I see all the pretty colors. It may not be for everyone, but Apple should at least have an option to disable it.
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