Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's look at the basics of using the Mac Menu Bar.
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The Mac Menu Bar is one of the fundamental differences between using macOS and using
another system like Windows. The Menu Bar is always at the top. It's not part of the window
that you're currently using but it is focused on that window. So, for instance, here if I'm editing
a TextEdit document all of the menu commands up here apply to this window. The one that is
currently active. Now in this tutorial we're just going to deal with Menu itself. The left side of
the Menu Bar. There are several menus in the Menu Bar on the left. The first one just has the Apple
symbol there. It's called the Apple Menu. The next one after that has the name of the app that you're
currently using. In this case the Finder. But you could see now that I'm using TextEdit it's
TextEdit instead of Finder. The name of the menu changes to reflect the app that you're currently
using. So you can use it as an indicator to see which window is actually the active one. You can
call this the App Menu or the Application Menu. Then after that what you see will depend on what
application you're using. Usually there are some standard menus like, for instance, we see File,
Edit, View, Window and Help. If I switch to TextEdit we see File, Edit, Window, and Help
are there. But in addition to that there's a Format menu. If we switch to Safari we could see
File, Edit, View, Window, and Help but there's also a History menu and a Bookmarks menu.
Now each menu includes menu items or Commands. If you click on the Menu the list of menu items
appears. To use a menu item you would then click on the menu item itself. So I can click on System
Preferences here to bring up System Preferences. Note there are two ways to use menu items. The
first is what I just showed you. Click once to select a menu. Click again to select the
menu item. But you could also click and hold the menu, drag down to the menu item you want,
and then release. Now sometimes menus go several levels deep. For instance, if I click on the
View Menu here notice that Sort By actually has a submenu. So I can go one level deeper. Sometimes
menus can go two, three, four, or even more levels deep. Now also note sometimes you'll see
checkmarks next to items. Like, for instance, in the Finder under View you'll see a checkmark
next to the view that you're currently using for the window. In this case is the List
view. But if I were to switch to Icon view now notice the checkmark is there. You can
find checkmarks in various different places. For instance here's another one under View, Sort By,
I see a checkmark next to the option I've chosen. If I want to sort by name
then I select that and now when I go back here I can see a checkmark next to that.
Now the Apple menu is unique in that it is always there no matter which app you're using
with the same choices in it. You have choices that effect the entire system. For instance
you could use Sleep, Restart, Shut Down, Log Out. These are system functions. Not functions of the
app that you're currently using. All the other menus contain commands that change depending
upon the app that you're using. So, for instance, under File here in the Finder you'll see things
like New Finder Window, New Folder, New Smart Folder, New Tab. These pertain to the Finder. But
if you go to TextEdit then File contains things pertaining to documents. So New for new document,
Open a document, Close, Save, Rename, Move To. Things that you wouldn't find in the Finder
but makes sense here when you're editing documents in an app like TextEdit or Pages,
or Numbers, or Word. In almost all apps, under the App menu, you'll find the Quit command.
Now one thing you may notice when looking through menus is sometimes menu items are
grayed out. Notice. for instance, Copy is grayed out here. I can't select it. I could select other
menu commands but anything that's grayed out isn't available. The reason for that is because
that function can't be performed right now. In this case I can't Copy text unless I have some
text selected. I don't. I just have the cursor sitting there at the end of this line. But if I
were to select some text and then go to the Edit menu I could see now Copy is active. So whenever
you see a grayed out menu item it means that you can't perform that function right now because of
the mode you're in or what you have selected or what you are currently doing in the app.
Now whenever you see a menu command with three dots after it that means it's going to bring
up a dialogue box for further instructions. So if I select this you could see it brings up this
dialogue box to ask me where I want to export this pdf to. A command that doesn't have that, like New
here, doesn't require any additional instruction. New would just instantly create a new document.
Also notice that next to some menu commands there are keyboard shortcuts. The symbols here and the
letters tell you which keys will active these menu commands without using the menu at all. So in this
case I see this symbol for the Command key and B. So Command B will bold text. I don't need to go to
Format, Font, Bold to bold text. I could just use Command B. Get to know these symbols. For instance
here for Copy Style is Option Command C. You could see that symbol on the Option or Alt key
on the keyboard. In the View menu here under Zoom In you could see an Up Arrow. That's the
shortcut for Shift. Then Enter Full Screen shows me a shortcut that shows me Control Command F.
Now if you ever need to find a menu command you can use the Help Menu. The Help Menu is available
on almost every app you will use. You notice the first thing at the top of Help is Search.
You can Search for a menu. So I'm going to Search for Subscript and you could see it finds it
under Baseline > Subscript. If I move my cursor over it I could use this here instead of going
to the menu command. But I could also see exactly where it is. You could see here it's under Format,
Font, Baseline, Subscript. A keyboard shortcut to get to the Help Search function is Command Shift
and then Slash or Command Question Mark. That takes you right there. Then you could Search
and then down arrow and then Return and it would apply the Command.
There are a few times when you might not see the Menu Bar. One is if you go into System
Preferences. Under Dock & Menu Bar you select Dock & Menu Bar here on the left. There's an option for
Automatically hide and show the menu bar. When you use that the Menu Bar goes away at the top. But it
will reappear if I move my cursor there. So it's a way of cleaning up your screen focusing more on
what you are doing and giving you a little extra space. But also the Menu Bar goes away if you go
into Full Screen Mode. So you could do that with View, Enter Full Screen, or click on the green
button there. Then you could see it takes the app window to full screen mode and the menu bar
is gone. But to get it back all you need to do is move your cursor up to the top of the screen. Then
the Menu Bar, as well as the window Tool Bar, will appear. So now you could use this to click the
green button or go to View, Exit Full Screen to go back to regular window mode with the Menu Bar.
One of the keys to learning how to use any app is to simply look through all of the different
menus and look at all the submenus in each menu and see what is possible. Try things
out with sample documents that you create. If you just come over from Windows it does
take a little while to get used to the fact that the Menu Bar is always here at the top.
If I've got this window selected the Menu Bar is here. If I go to Safari and have this window
selected you could see the Menu Bar changes there. I don't see two different Menu Bars,
one on each window. I will see Tool Bars with lots of similar commands and things there.
But the full set of what you could really do in an app exists in the Menu Bar.