How To Add Battery Percentage To Menu Bar in macOS Big Sur

Is your MacBook not displaying the remaining battery percentage, near the battery icon in the menu bar? This is the default setting in macOS Big Sur, but you can easily change it. More, you can also add the battery widget to the new Control Center and also quickly add or remove other icons from the status bar.

How To Add Battery Percentage To Menu Bar

The default macOS Big Sur settings will only display the remaining battery icon in the MacBook’s menu bar, providing a rough estimate about how much battery is left for you to play with. Proceed as follows to also display the available percentage:

• Open System Preferences, from the Dock.
• Click on Dock & Menu Bar.
• In the left sidebar, scroll for Other Modules and click on Battery.
• Check the Show Percentage option.

Tip: You can also check ‘Show in Control Center’, to display the remaining battery in the new control panel. In Control Center, the Battery widget will automatically display with the percentage info, even if Show Percentage isn’t enabled.

Trick To Add Modules To Menu Bar

In macOS Big Sur you can easily add widgets from the Control Center to the menu bar. For example, if you want to pin the ‘Sound’ icon to the menu bar, you have to:

• Open the Control Center.
• Click & hold on Sound.
• Drag & drop it to the menu bar.
• You can apply this trick with any module available in the Control Center. The action won’t remove the widget from Control Center. The module will remain in the control panel too, and will be also available in the menu bar.

How To Rearrange Icons In Menu Bar

macOS Big Sur allows you to easily edit the order of the icons in the status bar. All that you have to do is press & hold the Command (cmd) key + left-click on the module that you want to reorder. Drag & drop it to a new location.
Tip: To quickly remove icons from the menu bar, just drag & drop them outside of the bar.
Fact: Default icons such as Control Center, Siri, Current Date and Time can’t be relocated. Siri and Spotlight can be removed from the status bar, by un-checking ‘Show in Menu Bar’ in their respective Dock & Menu Bar settings area.

Other Menu Bar Icons

Other quick actions that you can enable in the menu bar are Fast User Switching, Accessibility Shortcuts and Time Machine. The first two can also be added as widgets in the Control Center, while Time Machines is only available for the menu bar.
How To: You can enable them from the same Dock & Menu Bar settings window, available under System Preferences.

Have you upgraded your Mac to macOS Big Sur? What’s your feedback? Do you have any less know tips & tricks that you would like to add? Don’t hesitate to mention them in the comments section.

Related: Is your iPhone not connecting to macOS Big Sur via the Lightning cable? Here is how to fix it!