In iPadOS 27, the menu bar that was introduced in iPadOS 26 gets a number of small improvements that make it feel different than it did last year. Altogether, they make the iPad’s menu bar feel much more like its Mac counterpart, for better or worse.

Here’s what’s changing:

Relocating The Menu Bar

The menu bar gets relocated from the top-center of the screen to the top-left side, presumably to align it closer with the menu bar on macOS. This initially felt like a bug to me, but after a couple of weeks, I’ve acclimated to it, and its fine. It is another case of “why can’t the iPad have its own implementation that’s different from the Mac”, but I don’t feel that passionately about it to raise a big stink.

Display App Name in Status Bar

IPadOS 27 now shows name of the current foreground app in the menu bar, next to the time. If you have the menu bar set to auto-hide, this is where you tap or click to display it.

Technically, this isn’t a menu bar change per se, as Apple seems to consider the menu bar to be the collection of menu items, and not the physical space on the screen they occupy. But this is close enough, so I’m including it anyway.

I’m generally in favor of this change, as it can help users identify which is currently receiving input in a multi-window scenario.

Persistent Menu Bar

The more interesting change is the option to make the menu bar persistent. In iPadOS 26, the menu bar hides automatically until you swipe down from the top of the screen or move the mouse to the top of the screen.

Navigate to Settings > Multitasking & Gestures and you’ll find a new option “Automatically Show and Hide Menu Bar”.

Toggling this option on preserves the old behavior. Turning this off makes it so the full menu bar is displayed whenever an app is in focus. Again, you could argue that if you leave this on, it makes the experience feel that much more like the Mac.

Menu Bar Items Lose Some Icons

The last menu bar related change is a reversal in policy from Apple around having every menu bar item also have an associated icon. While this wasn’t really an issue on iPadOS since we had never had a menu bar to that point, many Mac users pointed out that Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines had previously recommended against doing this (I kind of liked it on iPadOS).

Apple is officially returning to its previous recommendation on menu bar icons, and you’ll notice that only some key menu bar items will have icons.

Conclusion

Overall, these menu bar changes are a case of minor change adding up to make a big impact. They also show that Apple is continuing its direction of aligning its various platforms around similar UI conventions, for better or worse.

IPadOS 27 will be released to the public sometime this fall.