Menu Extra

Menu Extras are a mixture of indicators and a menu that gives you direct access to settings, be they in System Preferences (which is often the case) or elsewhere.

Menu Extras appeared on the scene as of Mac OS X 10.1 "Puma". Before that, Dock Extras temporarily held their place. Dock Extras were pretty much Menu Extras sitting on the Dock.

Macintosh users also refer to menu extras as menulets.

Menu extras often appear with the file extension .menu and often reside in the Mac OS X System folder. Most are in: Mac OS X Boot Drive > System > Library > CoreServices > Menu Extras.

Users can move menu extras around in the menu bar by holding down the command key and dragging them. Should a user drag a menu extra off the menu bar, it, instead, is removed.

Menu extras can appear or disappear if a setting in the respective pane of System Preferences is toggled. They can also appear if they're double-clicked (once the user is inside the Menu Extras folder in the System folder) and if the Mac supports that function.