How to fix grayed-out time on menubar in Mac Monterey.
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[04/11, 2022] |
Time is money. Hello, this is Tomo.
Since I updated my mac to Monterey, the clock in the menu bar has been grayed out, and I was trying to fix it because it's annoying. At first, I thought it might be due to the contrast between the dark mode and the wallpaper, but changing the wallpaper color didn't solve the problem. And I searched and figured out it's the "feature" and is not a bug. I was wondering for a while because there must be a way to fix it.
But now that I know how to fix it successfully, I'd like to make a note of it. ！！！！！ ⏰
What happened.
Only the time is grayed out like this. It is very difficult to see, isn't it?
By the way, this time can be changed to an analog icon display, in which case it is not grayed out. However, the time is so small that it is very hard to tell what time it is😅.
Cause: my mac was in dnd mode
I figured out why the time grayed-out is. Because my mac was set DnD(Do Not Disturb). I don't know why Apple makes the feature like this. My thought is the time is a button to see notifications so it might be shown the status stop receiving notifications.
By the way, why my mac was set DnD is just linked to my iPhone's setting. I always set my iPhone to sleep mode, so my mac also went to sleep mode in conjunction with my iPhone, and I was using it without realizing it.
Solution 1: Turn off sleep mode.
The cause of the problem is that "the time is in sleep mode," so if you turn off "sleep mode," the time will turn white!
That's easy, right?
However, when you turn off the sleep mode, the iPhone also turns off its sleep mode.
So, you can turn off only the good night mode on the mac by turning off the mac and iPhone mode linkage.
How to do this
System Preferences > Notification and Intensive Mode > Share Between Devices > Uncheck
Solution 2: Show DnD status icon in the menu bar.
I want to leave Goodnight Mode (Intensive Mode) on, but still work with my iPhone, etc. to re-color the time! In this case, there was also a solution to the problem.
That is, "display the good-night mode icon in the menubar.
There are two ways to display the icon.
System Preferences > Dock and menu bar > Intensive mode > Show in menu bar > Check
Alternatively, you can use
Open the Control Center in the menu bar > Drag DnD icon to the menu bar
either of which will cause the icon to appear in the menubar. It is not clear why displaying the intensive mode icon on the menu bar would cure the time w
Also, once the icon is displayed in the menubar, the color of the time remains the same until it is rebooted, even if the icon is turned off. (I think this is a bug, but w)
Hopefully, future updates won't make things weird again. I hope it doesn't change again in the future, but at any rate, it's a great relief to have something I've been struggling with for months solved! 😀