A Closer Look at Application Menus

Introduction: Now, let’s take a look at what I call the application menus in the menu bar. Let’s go to my Mac.

Application Menus: When we’re looking at the menu bar, you’re going to see it says, because I’m in the finder, the finder up here. This is how we can see which application we are currently in. When I go over to my calendar, let’s go ahead and click on calendar here. You’re going to see that it changes and it says calendar. I click on the desktop because the desktop is part of the finder. Let’s go ahead and click on the desktop. It brings me back to the finder. I click on the calendar window. Let’s go ahead and click. Now we’re back in our calendar. We can easily see which app is our current app or the app that is frontmost, by going up to the menu bar.

Now, the menu items do change per app. If you’re on calendar, you’re going to see different menu items than you’re going to see if you’re in contacts or the finder, but there are some common menu items. You’re always going to find the app name up here, and under the app name is where you can go and quit the app, find the apps preferences. In most cases, you will always see the File and Edit as well. File is where you go and create a new file, and calendar you could create a new event. View shows you the different view options for the window. Again, this will change depending on which app you have. Another common menu item for apps is Help. This is usually at the very end of your menu items, and this is where you can go and find help for your app. Now, the other menu items are going to change depending on which app you have active or frontmost.

That’s the application menu on the Mac.