Well, this is a frustrating one. You boot up your Mac, and suddenly ALL your
third-party menu bar icons have vanished. 1Password? Gone. AlDente? Disappeared.
MonitorControl? Nowhere to be found. The apps are running (you can see them in Activity Monitor), but the menu bar is acting like they don’t exist. The documentation on this is scattered all over Reddit and Apple Support forums, so here’s the actual fix as of
October 30, 2025.
The Core Problem: Corrupted SystemUIServer Preferences
macOS uses a background process called SystemUIServer to manage menu bar icons.. During an update, the preference file for this service gets corrupted. When that happens, third-party apps can’t register their menu bar icons, even though they’re running perfectly fine.
The SystemUIServer preference file gets corrupted during the upgrade process. It’s also
been reported on MacBooks with the notch, where the menu bar rendering system has
additional complexity.
The Fix: Reset SystemUIServer Preferences
Open Terminal and run these commands to try to reset the server, which is the menubar controller. This is called the “SystemUIServer“
# do not delete the plist, just backup
mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist.backup
# kill the UI Server
killall SystemUIServer
This backs up your corrupted preferences file and forces SystemUIServer to create a
fresh one. Your menu bar should refresh immediately, and your third-party icons should
reappear.
That Didn’t Work: Reset Control Center Too
The first fix didn’t work, so then try resetting both ControlStrip and Control Center. The Control Center is what manages the new panes on the right, and the ControlStrip is a legacy thing for older Intel MacBooks that you don’t really need
killall ControlStrip SystemUIServer
And if you’re still having issues, then you can try to zap those plists
mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.controlcenter.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.controlcenter.plist.backup
killall ControlCenter SystemUIServer
The Nuclear Option Works!: Restart Dock and WindowServer
Sometimes the rendering system itself needs a kick, and this is what actually worked
killall Dock
The Dock restarted automatically and forced the menu bar to re-render properly. Eureka!
Boot into Safe Mode (Last Resort)
If nothing else works, I didn’t have to do this and it sounds pretty serious
- Restart your Mac and hold Shift during boot
- Once in Safe Mode (you’ll see “Safe Boot” in the menu bar), the system loads minimal
processes - Delete the preference files mentioned above
- Restarting normally, Safe Mode forces macOS to rebuild its caches and can fix deeper system issues
Jordan’s Ice is broken
No not that ICE, but Jordan’s ICE which is a menubar saver. There is a lot of work on the beta and so forth but at least for me, I don’t have menubar hiding, hopefully they fix this soon!
After the Fix: Relaunch Your Apps
Once your icons reappear, you may need to go through all the individual applications, I didn’t need to do this and it is a huge pain if you have alot of them
- Quit and relaunch some third-party apps to get their icons to show
- Check individual app settings to ensure “Show in menu bar” is enabled
- Command-drag icons to rearrange them in your preferred order
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