Menuwhere places the frontmost app's menus in a tidy vertical configuration at your mouse location…
With Menuwhere, there are no more long mouse trips to the menu bar—just press a hot key, choose the desired menu item, and that's that.
General Usage
Basic usage of Menuwhere is quite simple: By default, the frontmost app's menus will appear when you hold down the ⌘ key and right click your mouse. If you prefer using the keyboard to the mouse, define a hot key to show the frontmost app menu on the Menu tab of Menuwhere's Settings (keep reading). Once onscreen, you can navigate the menus in a number of ways:
- Using the mouse.
- Using the ↑ → ↓ ← arrow keys to select a menu item, ⏎ to activate it, and pressing esc to dismiss the menu.
- Typing letters of menu items' names, and using ⏎ to select the highlighted entry and move to the next menu level (or activate the item, once at the lowest level).
That's really all there is to it, but you can customize Menuwhere's behavior through its settings.
Settings
Menuwhere's three settings tabs control how it works, and make it easy to set up to match your workflow.
Menu
The Menu tab lets you set Menuwhere's keyboard shortcuts, controls what appears when you activate Menuwhere, and lets you change the menu's font size and appearance.
By default, you invoke Menuwhere by holding down the ⌘ key and right-clicking your mouse. You can change the added-modifier to fn, ⌃, or ⌥ using the pop-up menu in the first preference here. You can also disable mouse activation entirely, if you prefer.
With a modifier key defined here, you can easily move menus to new onscreen locations after you call them up. Once the menu is onscreen, move the mouse to where you'd like the menu to be located, then hold your defined modifier key and right-click at that location.
If you prefer to use the keyboard, though, you can also specify a keyboard shortcut in the Pop up frontmost app menu with hot key input box.
You can set these hot keys to whatever you like, but you'll want to use something relatively easy to type, yet that doesn't conflict with shortcut keys used in most apps. We recommend using the ⌃ and/or ⌥ modifier keys to cut down on such interference, as they're not used as often as the ⌘ key is in app-provided shortcuts.
Menuwhere can also display a "meta" menu which contains the menus for all open apps, which looks like this:
To view this meta menu, add the ⇧ key to the usual ⌘ key plus right-click Menuwhere activation mode. You can also assign a keyboard shortcut in the Pop up all app menus with hot key input box.
With the all-apps meta menu, you can use Menuwhere as a simple app switcher: If you select and activate the top-level entry (the app name) in the meta menu, then that app will come to the foreground. The active app's menu item is bolded, so you know which app you're currently in.
The Hide menus input box can be used to hide top-level menus that you don't want to see in the Menuwhere menu. The light gray text shows an example of two you may wish to hide—the Apple menu and the Help menu. To do so, just enter Apple, Help in the input box. You can hide more menus if you wish, just use a comma to separate each entry.
These settings are global, not per application. Any menu name entered here will be hidden in every app where it appears.
The Hide disabled menu items checkbox will do just that, and it can make it much easier and quicker to navigate certain menus. Here's TextEdit's Windows menu, as an example:
As you can see, hiding disabled menu items really tidies up the menus, and makes it so your eyes never need to skip a grayed-out item.
Many menu items have alternate versions—in Finder, for instance, holding down the ⌥ key changes (amongst many other items) the → menu item into . If you check the Make alternate menu items permanently visible box, then these alternate values will show immediately below the default values, like this:
You can use this mode to find alternate menu items you may not have even known about—Get Summary Info, for instance, is listed below Show Inspector; you'd see it in the regular menus if you held down the ⌃ key instead of the ⌥ key.
Hopefully, Position Apple menu below other menus is self-explanatory; uncheck this box, and it will appear at the top of the list.
The Reflect invisible menu bar for accessory apps checkbox controls whether or not Menuwhere will display a menu (if one exists) when you activate one of your menu bar apps. For example, if you're using Moom in the menu bar, and open its Settings, you'll see Moom's menus when you invoke Menuwhere if this preference is enabled. When disabled, you'll always see the menus that appear in the main menu bar.
If you find the default menu size too small—or too large—you can change it using the Text size pop-up menu. You can choose a range of values from 10 to 30; here's what each extreme looks like, compared to the default:
The Appearance controls how Menuwhere's menus look. If left on Default, Menuwhere's menus will match the system's dark or light appearance. You can also manually set Light or Dark, to force Menuwhere to use one of those modes.
This feature is only available in macOS Big Sur and newer; in older versions of macOS, Menuwhere will always reflect the setting in System Settings > General > Appearance.
Finally, if you'd rather not see keyboard shortcuts—and given you'll be navigating the menu with the keyboard or the mouse, they're somewhat useless—except as a memory aid for future use—just uncheck the Display Keyboard Shortcuts checkbox.
Advanced
The Advanced tab offers a possible fix for certain menus, and controls how Menuwhere launches and what mode it runs in.
The Preload menus box needs a bit of an explanation. You should only have to use this box if both of the following conditions are true:
- You use an app that contains a menu whose functionality is dependent on selected text—the Text menu in BBEdit, as shown above, is one such menu.
- Those menus are not working by default with Menuwhere.
If both of those conditions are true, you can add the app and the menu name to this box, as shown by the two apps we've already listed—add a comma (or press ⏎) and then type the name of the app (as seen when you hover over its Dock icon), the greater-than symbol, and the name of the menu.
With that entry in place, those menus should now work from Menuwhere. If you run into any that don't, please let us know.
Launch automatically at login and Show Settings on launch should both be self-explanatory, which just leaves the Run as [menu bar] application setting to discuss. You can choose one of three modes:
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[menu bar] This is the default, and it places a Menuwhere icon in the menu bar. You can then use the menu bar icon to verify your license or buy the app, check for updates, open this help file, or open the Settings.
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[standard] Menuwhere runs as a normal application with a Dock icon.
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[faceless] In Faceless mode, Menuwhere leaves no sign that it's active—there's nothing in your Dock or menu bar. In this mode, to reach Menuwhere's Settings—or to quit the app—you have to launch it again. The Advanced tab warns you about this when you use Faceless mode:
There are also three new buttons, so you can easily see the About box or this help, and quit the app.Finally, when operating in Faceless mode, the pop-up menu will show a new Menuwhere entry at the bottom, as seen at right. If you don't like that, just add Menuwhere to the Hide menus box on the Menu tab of Settings.
While it may take a bit of getting used to, Faceless mode is ideal for Menuwhere—there's really no interaction that has to occur with the app once you have the settings set to your liking. In Faceless mode, you don't lose Dock or menu bar space for an icon that you'll never need to use.
Updates
The Updates tab, as you might expect, lets you control how Menuwhere checks for updates.
If you check the Check for updates automatically box, you'll always get a notification when we release an updated version of the app. (No information is transmitted to our servers for this check.)
If you'd prefer to leave it disabled, you can; you'll just then have to watch our Twitter feed or blog for news of updated versions. And you can always update the latest version directly from the Menuwhere web page without losing your settings.
Tips on Using Help
Our help system is designed to be easy to use. The top area of the window contains page navigation buttons on the left, and a magnifying glass icon (that will open a search box) on the right. If you find the font size too small, you can increase it by pressing ⌃=; ⌃- will reduce the size.
We use some standard conventions for certain bits of text throughout our help system:
These sections of text contain additional explanatory material that's related to the topic being discussed, but may go into more detail or not quite fit in the regular flow, so we set it apart with a visual call-out.
These sections of text contain tips, shortcuts, hidden features, or other similar "goodies" to help you get the most out of the app.
This is text we really want you to read—generally, something that's very important relative to your use of the app. If you're just skimming the help files, don't skim these notes—please read them.
When we reference items in the menu, we highlight each menu item's name, and separate them with an arrow, like this:
→ →When we reference a setting in Settings, it'll be called out like this: A user-settable setting
Keys you type are called out: ⌘⌃4
Get More Help
If this help isn't enough, and you need additional assistance with Menuwhere, you can reach out to us via our other channels. Use our support page to open a trouble ticket or email us directly, and you can often find us on our Discord channel.
You might also find answers to your Menuwhere questions on the Menuwhere FAQ pages.