The other day, I wrote about a way to put the time and date on the modeline when Emacs is in full screen mode. The reason I cared was because full screen mode hid all the date widgets and I had to move the cursor to the top or bottom of the screen to see the date. Or so I thought.
Summer Emacs responded that she also ran Emacs in full screen but the macOS menu bar—with the date/time widget—was displayed. After a bit of back and forth, Summer Emacs discovered what was going on. It turns out macOS has a setting that controls when and if the menu bar is displayed. The default, apparently, is to hide the menu bar only when an application is in full screen mode. You can change that to never hide it. I did that and now I can see the date in both Emacs and my browser.
Yes, that means that I have one less line of screen real estate but that’s a price I’m willing to pay. Now I can always see the date and time just by looking. I’m calling it a win.
I was going to let this play out in the comments. It is, after all, a niche issue and one restricted to Mac users. Still, most readers never see the comments unless they’re commenting themselves and I thought this was helpful enough to make sure that everyone who cared saw it.
Update : he → she (clarifying that Summer Emacs is a she, not a he).