I noticed the following 9to5Mac article by Ben Lovejoy and was interested to see that there was a solution for menubar spacing which could be applied using the defaults command line tool.:

https://9to5mac.com/2026/05/22/how-to-stop-menu-bar-items-being-hidden-behind-the-macbook-pro-notch/

From the article, the following commands can be used to set menubar spacing to an integer value of 8 (half the default spacing of 16):

To revert back to the default spacing of 16:

Note: I needed to log out and log back in to see the menubar spacing changes.

These defaults commands are setting user-level global preferences, which are manageable via a configuration profile. Since this is the case, I decided to see if that meant menubar spacing is manageable via a profile. It is. For more details, please see below the jump.

The following profile matches the behavior of the defaults commands referenced earlier, where menubar spacing is set to an integer value of 8 (half the default spacing of 16):

Before profile installation (macOS is using default menubar spacing of 16):

After profile installation (menubar spacing is set to an integer value of 8, half the default spacing):

As with the defaults commands discussed earlier, I needed to log out and log back in to see the menubar spacing changes applied by the profile.