I want to be able to show the menu bar at all times, except when in full screen mode (watching a video or in a full screen app) at which time I'd like to be able to toggle show/hide the menu bar with the keyboard.
In system settings I have "Automatically hide and show the menu bar" set to "In Full Screen Only", like this:
After reading reading in this forum, I became discouraged whether this could be done and posted here.
I've tried several things, and my current work-around uses the following macro, which moves the mouse to the screen top for a few seconds and then back to its original position. It works but means I have to pick a pause time (like 5 sec) which might be not be good in all cases, plus my mouse can't be used during that pause time.
I'd prefer having a toggle so that the menubar shows/hides each time the hotkey is used and I don't have to worry about a suitable pause time. But I can't figure out how to do that.
I'm not sure if your request is possible, (it may be) but I want to ask why you want to do this? You don't need the menu bar visible to be able to control its menu items from inside KM. The only reason you need the menu bar visible is for the user to see it, which isn't helpful anyway unless the user plans to use the mouse to click on it somewhere, in which case, just let the user move the mouse to the top of the screen as the "trigger" to show the menu bar. Why do you want to use a keyboard key to trigger this when the user still has to use the mouse to make any use of it?
When I want the menu bar visible it's mostly to see what time it is in any of 4 time zones I track, or it could to see what day it is, the date, etc. all sorts of things that are very convenient to see at a glance. But of course there's no need to have any of that visible if I'm watching a video or making full use of a full screen app.
P.S.
I always find "why?" questions to be strange in a "how to" forum. People are so different and do in so many different ways that it seems strange to be inquiring about them. Why should we imagine everybody does things the same way we do? If we all did things the exact same way then there wouldn't be any need for "how to" forums like this because we would all be satisfied with the way the developer liked it
At least 50% of the time, when users are asked "why", they discover there is a much better solution to their problem. So it's a perfectly valid question to ask, even though some people are annoyed by it. So I apologize for annoying you, but I will continue to ask people "why" because it usually achieves good results. However if you get the website rules changed to block people from asking "why" then I will stop doing it.
@Airy, I suggest you ask in a private message because any posts which don't directly address the user's question reduce the user's chance of getting an answer. People who are focused on providing an actual answer may be reluctant to if they have to read through all sorts of posts -- it dilutes what's important with other things.
Thank you for your apology -- I accept and ask that you remove your posts for the above reasons. Thanks again.
The "why" can often inform the answer. More importantly, it can catch those cases when the questioner is already three steps down the wrong path and backing up can lead to a better solution.
Your "mouse to the top" is probably the best solution to your problem. Anything else will involve launching System Settings and changing the option you showed in your screen shot, which is going to be more annoying than losing control of your pointer for a few seconds...
But another option, prompted by the "why?", would be to present the information you want above the full screen video. Perhaps you could make use of a KM "Custom HTML Prompt" to throw up a "dashboard" of useful info? Or perhaps via a third party utility? Maybe widgets you can add to Notification Centre?
Thanks for the support, Nige. As you indicate, there may be better solutions to his problem in this case. My account on this site has private messages disabled, so I can't take his advice to do that.
As a compromise, I will refrain from answering his questions in the future, since he doesn't want to be asked "why?"
If what a person is asking for is impossible, understanding the use case and what they're ultimately trying to achieve will help other people to help them. Alternate solutions could well exist, but if the answer is simply left at «it's impossible», then that doesn't help anyone (present or future).
Potential alternate solution: if you use Bartender (or something similar), you could set a hotkey to show the menu bar that way. Presumably apps similar to Bartender also have hotkey options like this, but I'm not familiar enough with any of them to say for sure.
