Notched: a free Dynamic Island for your MacBook
Pure black so it disappears into the notch, or a Liquid Glass pill on displays without one. It morphs to show your music, timers, meetings and more, then gets out of the way.
Free
and open source, GPL-3.0
macOS 26+
notch or no notch
< 0.5%
idle CPU target
0
permissions asked at launch
What Notched does
Now Playing
Artwork, controls, a live visualiser and opt-in synced lyrics for Music, Spotify and anything that reports to macOS.
Status at a glance
Battery and charging, AirPods and Bluetooth, Caps Lock, Wi-Fi, camera and mic indicators, calls, downloads, timers and Keep Awake.
A better HUD
Volume and brightness appear in the island instead of the big system overlay. If Notched is ever slow, keys pass straight through.
Productivity
Clipboard history (⌃⇧V), calendar countdown with one-click Join, reminders, weather with UV index, a colour picker and a real shell.
For developers
Track Claude Code usage and approve or deny from the island, plus a local Activity API so your own scripts can post to it.
Your layout
Choose what sits beside the notch, the order of the expanded tabs and which ones appear. Swipe sideways between them.
Like iPhone, on a Mac
One main activity sits beside the notch, with up to two small bubbles. When something needs you, the island expands briefly, one alert at a time. Open it to see everything else, and swipe sideways with two fingers to move between cards and tabs.
Nothing asked for at launch
Every feature is a module you switch on. A module only asks for a permission when you turn it on, and a module that’s off costs nothing: no timers, no observers, no processes.
| Permission | Used by | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Automation (Music, Spotify) | Now Playing | Controls playback and reads what's playing. |
| Accessibility | HUD | Sees the volume and brightness keys to show its own HUD. |
| Calendars | Calendar | Next event, agenda and meeting links. |
| Reminders | Reminders | Today's and overdue reminders. |
| Location (optional) | Network, Weather | Wi-Fi names, and weather without typing a city. |
| Downloads folder | Downloads | Progress of files being downloaded. |
Nothing is collected or sent anywhere unless you turn on a module that needs the network: synced lyrics (LRCLIB) and Weather (Open-Meteo).
Install Notched
Paste this into Terminal. The script checks the download against its checksum, installs Notched in your Applications folder and opens it. Run it again any time to update.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Notched17/Notched/main/scripts/install-from-release.sh | bashRequires macOS 26 or later. This is an early build and isn’t notarised by Apple yet. If you download the zip in a browser instead, open System Settings > Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. Notched is free software under the GPL-3.0 licence.