--- title: "The menu bar icon and popover" url: https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-menu-bar-icon-and-popover category: "Getting started" tags: ["menu bar", "getting started", "notifications", "troubleshooting"] summary: "Storage Studio lives in the menu bar. A small coloured dot on its icon shows its state and a number shows notifications. Clicking opens the Home window or, in the Advanced view, a popover; right-clicking opens a short menu." updated: 2026-10-01T05:35:25.000Z --- # The menu bar icon and popover Storage Studio lives in the menu bar. A small coloured dot on its icon shows its state and a number shows notifications. Clicking opens the Home window or, in the Advanced view, a popover; right-clicking opens a short menu. Storage Studio lives in your menu bar, next to the clock. A small coloured dot on its icon tells you its state at a glance, and a number in the corner counts notifications that need you. Click the icon to open Storage Studio; right-click it for a short menu. ## What the icon tells you When everything is fine there is no dot. Otherwise one dot shows the most important thing going on: | Dot | Meaning | |---|---| | None | All normal | | Green, pulsing | Working — a clear-up, a move or a copy is running | | Orange | Automatic actions are paused, or your Mac is low on space | | Red | Your external drive isn't connected or isn't the expected disk, your Mac is critically low on space, or your licence isn't active | | Yellow | Full Disk Access isn't granted | By default, "low" means less than 40 GB free on your built-in disk and "critically low" means less than 15 GB. A number at the top-right of the icon counts notifications that need your attention; it uses the colour of the most serious one and goes away when there are none left. In [Demo Mode](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/demo-mode) the icon changes to a record symbol. ## Clicking the icon What opens depends on the view you've chosen in [Interface settings](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/interface-settings): - **Intelligence** (the default for new installs) opens the Storage Studio window on its [Home screen](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-home-screen). - **Advanced** opens the popover described below. **Right-click** (or Control-click) the icon for: **Settings…**, **Eject** your drive, **More…** (the full tools menu), **Turn On Demo Mode…**, **Restart Storage Studio**, **Quit Storage Studio** and **About Storage Studio**. ## The Advanced popover The popover's header line sums up the state, for example **All systems normal**, **Internal disk low**, **External drive disconnected** or **Paused — automatic actions disabled**. Below it are status rows, buttons such as **Free Up Space Now**, **Run Rules Only** and **Dry Run**, and **Pause** / **Resume**. ```mermaid %% caption: How the popover decides which state to show flowchart TD A[Open the popover] --> B{Is the background service running?} B -->|No| C[Service is stopped: Start Service] B -->|Yes| D{Automatic actions paused?} D -->|Yes| E[Paused: click Resume] D -->|No| F{Is your drive connected?} F -->|No| G[External drive disconnected] F -->|Yes| H[Normal: space and status] ``` *Flowchart — How the popover decides which state to show. Outline:* - Open the popover - leads to Is the background service running? - Is the background service running? - No: leads to Service is stopped: Start Service - Yes: leads to Automatic actions paused? - Automatic actions paused? - Yes: leads to Paused: click Resume - No: leads to Is your drive connected? - Is your drive connected? - No: leads to External drive disconnected - Yes: leads to Normal: space and status - **Service is stopped.** The background service isn't running. Click **Start Service**. After that, Storage Studio starts it each time the app opens. If it won't stay started, see ["Service is stopped" won't go away](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/service-is-stopped). - **Paused.** **Pause** halts automatic actions while the service keeps running; **Resume** turns them back on. See [Pausing or stopping everything](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/pausing-and-stopping). - **External drive disconnected.** Work that needs the drive waits until you plug it back in. See [When your drive is disconnected](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/when-your-drive-is-disconnected). The footer has **Log** (⌘L), **Rules**, **Inspect** (⌘I), **Help** (⌘?), **More**, and a power button to quit (⌘Q). **More** lists every other window, the **Legal** documents, **Share Your Experience…** and a **Setup & maintenance** submenu with **Re-run Setup Wizard…**, **Check for updates**, **Verify configuration…**, **Start at login**, **Restart Storage Studio…**, **Reset Storage Studio…** and **Uninstall Storage Studio…**. To go back to the calmer window, choose **More** → **Switch to Intelligence view…**. If the icon doesn't appear at all, see [The menu bar icon doesn't appear](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/menu-bar-icon-missing). See also: [The Learning Center and notifications](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/learning-center-and-notifications), [Keyboard shortcuts](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/keyboard-shortcuts), [The Preferences window](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/preferences-window). ## What links here - [Demo Mode](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/demo-mode) - [Interface settings](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/interface-settings) - [Keyboard shortcuts](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/keyboard-shortcuts) - [Share Your Experience](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/share-your-experience) - [Show in Dock](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/show-apps-in-dock) - [The Home screen](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-home-screen) - [The Learning Center and notifications](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/learning-center-and-notifications) - [The menu bar icon doesn't appear](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/menu-bar-icon-missing) - [What Storage Studio does](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/what-storage-studio-does) - [When your drive is disconnected](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/when-your-drive-is-disconnected) - [Your first launch, step by step](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/your-first-launch)