Yes, this widget's really handy for getting quick answers to the inevitable questions that interrupt some other task: "Which weekday is Sept 3rd again?" "When's Thanksgiving this year?" I don't want to open another app; a quick glance at a desk calendar is all that's needed.
I use Fantastical, whose menu widget has taken on this task for me. If Fantastical's overkill for you, I recommend Itsycal which has a similar menu bar feature (minus Fantastical's NLP magic for adding appointments) for the built-in Calendar app.
I have the perfect app for you.
Found it a few weeks ago.
It's free and open source too.
It's called Itsycal.
https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/
EDIT: You can also configure custom hotkeys. So for me, I have Command + Coma (⌘ + ,) set up to pull up Itsycal. So regardless of what I'm doing, in any app, I can pull up my calendar just hitting two buttons. It's really changed a lot. I used to have my calendar always open in the background.
There's itsycal https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/ and Calendarique too. Itsycal is the free option and Calendarique costs a bit of money. Calendarique is available via Mac App Store. And lastly there's also Fantastical and BusyCal which to my knowledge has a menubar option along side Fantastical that all allows see current calender events. But in your specific use case I would go with the other redditors and their suggestions of getting iStat Menus if you want to have a dropdown when pressing the Time in menubar. I initially read the the title a bit wrong, hence my suggestions.
It's itsycal: https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/
This was one of the things that hurt me on Big Sur, can't hide the time and date, before I could use Itsycal instead of the native date and time, it has better features like showing calendar and events on click.
To add some, I really like:
Itsycal - I use it to show the date in the menubar and when I click it I have my calendar and all the meetings available.
Menumeters - Show cpu usage, memory, etc in the menubar.
Jukebox - show the current song playing on Spotify in the menubar.
i use itsycal basicaly because i wanted the actual widget to show me the calendar but it didnt, just puting it out there if anyone's interested. its pretty customizable and it has worked great for me for the past two years i think
As u/DracheMitch mentioned, since the clock icon is used to open the Notification Center, Apple has made its display and position mandatory.
I've reduced it to an analogue icon (System Prefs > Dock and Menu Bar > Clock) and use the free itsycal app with a custom date format E, MMM d h:mm a to show a date-time combo with a handy calendar dropdown. Bartender 4 is a great utility to clean up the menubar but so far can't hide Apple's clock.
Okay so I got Spark for email, then I use Google calendar. The Gmail account is connected to spark so I've got calendar on sync with my email (1) Then I also have the same Gmail account connected to my mac calendar. (2) Then I use, itsycal which connects to Mac calendar, which in turn actually connects to my Google calendar.
So, my calendar is always synced (using Google calendar) and I add tasks using itsycal - when on my mac, using spark - when going through email, google calendar/assistant - when using my phone.
I use Microsoft Todo for simple Todo lists where dates aren't necessary for me. I'll integrate all in notion once I'm pleased with my set up.
I also strongly recommend: Tick Tick
I use and love itsycal which lets you fully customize the date / time format of the clock and is super easy to setup. I use it to replace the system clock, but you can easily run it side side.
Don't recall this being a thing. Do you have a link?
Take a look at Calendar 366 Plus. Excellent inexpensive full-featured MenuBar gizmo that's well supported by the developer with regular updates: http://nspektor.com/
There's also Itsycal -- also regularly updated. Not as many bells & whistles, but very nice... and... it's free: https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/