How to set a custom menu bar color in macOS Big Sur

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Big Sur has made a significant design change to macOS. The difference will be noticeable the second you upgrade and start on your new desktop. Icons are the obvious change, but as you use the operating system more and more, the more subtle changes will appear as well.

One change to the macOS user interface in Big Sur is the color of the menu bar. Show now accent color of your wallpaper. Most of the time, it looks transparent with the wallpaper slightly visible, but the color depends on the type of wallpaper you are using.

Custom menu bar color in macOS

If you want to set a custom menu bar color on macOS, you will have to go through a few hurdles. Basically what you need to do is make a copy of your wallpaper and add a solid color bar on top. The bar will be the color you want to display in the menu bar. With this we start.

> Edit> To keep it simple, we're going to use an app to create a custom wallpaper with a solid color bar at the top.

What do you need

You need the following items to get started;

The HEX color code for the color you want to set for the menu bar.
The image you want to use as a wallpaper.
The full path to the wallpaper image.
The Terminal application (already on your Mac).

Create a custom wallpaper

Follow these steps to create a custom wallpaper from the wallpaper you are currently using. This custom wallpaper will look the same except for a solid color bar at the top. We will be using an open source tool called Change Menu Bar Color.

Open the terminal.
Run this command to clone Change Color to from the menu bar Github.

git clone https://github.com/igorkulman/ChangeMenuBarColor.git

Cloning will take up to a minute .
Navigate to the cloned directory with this command.

cd ChangeMenuBarColor

Run this command to generate the new wallpaper. Edit the placeholder text with the actual values from the wallpaper path and HEX value of the color desired for the menu bar.

swift run ChangeMenuBarColor "path to wallpaper" "hexadecimal color code"

>> Open the ChangeMenuBarColor folder (it's located in your user folder).

Law - click on le right button on le wallpaper file newly generated .

Select Set as desktop image in the context menu.

> Size>

Make sure that the wallpaper image you use to generate a new wallpaper fits your screen perfectly. macOS can normally position or resize a large image to fit your screen, but ChangeMenuBarColor cannot. If the image is not the correct size, the new generated wallpaper may appear stretched or disproportionate.

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