First, figure out which problem you have. If the whole bar is missing, including the Apple menu and the clock, start with fix 1. If the bar is there but some icons are missing, skip to missing icons.

1. The menu bar is set to hide

Move the pointer to the very top of the screen. If the menu bar slides down, it’s set to hide automatically. To keep it showing:

Open the Apple menu > System Settings. If you can’t reach the menu bar, open System Settings from the Dock or press ⌘ Space and type “System Settings”.
Click Menu Bar on macOS 26 Tahoe and later, or Control Center on Sonoma and Sequoia.
Set Automatically hide and show the menu bar to Never.

2. An app is in full screen

Full-screen apps hide the menu bar by design. Move the pointer to the top to see it, or press Control ⌘ F to leave full screen in most apps. To keep the menu bar visible even in full screen, set the auto-hide option above to Never.

3. It’s on your other display

With an external display, check System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Displays have separate Spaces. When it’s off, the menu bar appears only on your main display. Turn it on to get a menu bar on every display. You may need to log out and back in for the change to take effect.

To choose which display is the main one, open System Settings > Displays, click Arrange, and drag the white bar onto the display you want.

4. The menu bar got stuck

If the bar is blank, frozen, or missing items it should show, restart the processes that draw it. Open Terminal and run:

killall ControlCenter
killall SystemUIServer

Both restart on their own in a second or two. Nothing is lost. If you’d rather not use Terminal, open Activity Monitor, find ControlCenter, and click the stop button (✕) to quit it.

5. Something you installed is interfering

Start up in safe mode, which loads only what macOS needs. If the menu bar is fine there, an app or login item is the cause.

Apple silicon: shut down, then press and hold the power button until you see startup options. Select your disk, hold Shift, and click Continue in Safe Mode.
Intel: restart and hold Shift until you see the login window.

Then restart normally and turn off recent login items in System Settings > General > Login Items, one at a time, until you find the one causing it.

Missing icons, not a missing menu bar

If the menu bar is there but an app’s icon isn’t, check these in order:

The notch is hiding it. On a MacBook with a notch, icons that don’t fit to its right don’t appear on macOS 14 to 26. macOS 27 folds them behind an arrow at the edge of the bar instead. How the notch hides icons.
It was dragged off. Holding ⌘ while dragging an icon off the bar removes it. Look in the app’s settings for Show in menu bar, or quit and reopen the app.
It’s switched off. On Tahoe and later, check System Settings > Menu Bar > Allow in the Menu Bar.
The app isn’t running. Open it from Applications. Menu bar apps often have no Dock icon, so it’s easy to miss that they quit.

Menu bar disappeared on your Mac? Here’s how to get it back