A pro tip for reducing visual noise in OS X

I use Bartender[1] for ~the same purpose. I love the idea of a minimal menu bar there's just too much stuff I might want to check occasionally.

So Bartender just shows me my time tracker (important for client work), Fantastical (I could probably ditch this) and battery status; everything else is in the hidden Bartender draw until I need it. Just one hotkey away - I bind it to Hyper-B[2]

[1] http://www.macbartender.com/

[2] http://brettterpstra.com/2012/12/08/a-useful-caps-lock-key/

I recently bought an iMac with Mavericks and the fullscreen applications work like wonders. They hide the menu bars and deck, letting you see them when hovering over the edges. It's my first Apple PC, so I don't know how it is with previous versions, but definitely worth a look if you're a bit of a productivity freak like me.

A different approach to this is Bartender [1]. It hides the menubar apps on the right but keeps the menus on the left.

[1] http://www.macbartender.com/

Not a bad idea, though I don't know if the need outweighs the work of installing yet another background app...for starters, the menu bar really isn't that much "noise" (at least on the left side, I do agree that the background-app icons seem to proliferate on the right)...secondly, on an iMac screen, or even a 15-inch Retina, my eyes have more than enough real-estate to dwell on without even noticing the menu bar.

Doesn't full screen mode solve the problem of menus?