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Customizing your toolbar in Mac apps (Member Post)

We all get so used to the way that our Macs work that we sometimes forget that one of reasons that we love the platform is its flexibility—and I’m just as guilty of this as anybody.

When I recently upgraded my iMac to Big Sur, I opened up Mail and was dismayed to find the Search box, which I use all the time, was gone from the menu bar, replaced instead with a measly magnifying glass icon.

“Wait, now I have to click that icon to expand the search box before I can even type in my search terms?” I thought. “What a pain.”

But then I remembered that those Mail icons up in that toolbar aren’t set in stone, thanks to one of my very favorite Mac features: Customize Toolbar.

You can usually find the command in the View menu in any app that supports it, which is pretty much any Mac app that has that standard toolbar there, including many third-party apps. When you select it, a sheet slides down displaying every button that the app allows you to put in the toolbar. And, in a move familiar to users of iOS, the icons currently in the toolbar start to jiggle, allowing you to drag them.…

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