AloeNotch
NewVersion 0.15.2 — see what’s new

Your notch
just woke up.

AloeNotch turns the MacBook notch into a Dynamic Island — now playing with synced lyrics, a drop shelf for files, and your day at a glance. Solid black or liquid glass. Invisible until you hover.

Download for macOS Watch the film

Free · Apple Silicon · macOS 26 or later

Style
Bounce

Glass, lyrics, and a notch
that listens.

$0no Pro tier, ever
37 MBmemory in use
<1%of one core, idle
MITopen source

Everything the notch
should have been.

A glass notchNew

Switch the open panel to glass and it frosts whatever is behind it, with an edge that shifts color with the song. It stays black over the camera, so the cutout never shows.

Lyrics in the notchNew

The line being sung, right under the track title. Off until you turn it on.

An equalizer that listensNew

The bars follow the actual music, bass to treble. The sound is measured, never recorded.

Now Playing, everywhere

Apple Music, Spotify — even YouTube in your browser. Title, artwork and controls for whatever your Mac is playing.

The Shelf

Drag a file onto the notch and it opens to catch it. Park screenshots and downloads, then drag them back out anywhere.

Your day, at a glance

Your calendar, the weather and a clock in the header — and a Join button ten minutes before a Zoom, Meet or Teams call.

A timer, in the notch

It takes over the strip while it counts down. With music playing, it pinches off into its own bubble beside the notch.

The last 24 things you copied

Click one to copy it again. Kept in memory only, and anything a password manager marks private is skipped.

Invisible by design

Collapsed, it hugs the hardware notch to the pixel — pure black, nothing added. On a screen without a notch, it draws its own.

And the small stuff

  • Mirror, for a look before a call
  • Notes that stay put
  • Ambient Glow
  • Battery, with a charging shimmer
  • ⌃⌥N to open it
  • Two-finger swipes
  • AirPods and speaker picker
  • Two-page layout
  • Any display you like
  • Calm to Lively bounce

Free, without the asterisk.

No trial, no licence key, no Pro tier, no account, and nothing inside the app asking you to upgrade. It's MIT licensed and the whole thing is on GitHub, so you can read exactly what it does before you run it.

What it doesn't do.

  • No analytics, no telemetry, no account. Nothing about how you use it leaves your Mac.
  • Only the requests you'd expect. Weather, a daily update check, and lyrics if you turn them on — each one optional. The full list.
  • Clipboard history never touches the disk. It lives in memory and clears when the app quits.
AloeNotch icon

Get AloeNotch

Version 0.15.2 · Apple Silicon · macOS 26 or later · what’s new

Download free · 3.1 MB
First launch on macOS

AloeNotch is an independent app, so macOS will ask before the first launch: open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click “Open Anyway”. You only do this once.

Intel Mac, or macOS 15?

AloeNotch needs Apple Silicon and macOS 26. 0.6.0 is the final build for Intel Macs and macOS 15 — it still works, but it won’t receive new features or fixes.

Download 0.6.0 (Intel · final release)

Questions

My Mac doesn't have a notch. Does it still work?

Yes. On a display without a notch, AloeNotch draws its own strip in the same place at the top of the screen, and everything behaves the same way. With more than one display, pick where it lives in Settings → General.

What permissions does it need?

None, to start with. Each one is asked for only when you switch on the feature that needs it: Calendar, Location for the weather, Bluetooth for headphone battery, system audio recording for the live equalizer, and Accessibility to replace the volume and brightness HUD. The shelf, clipboard, timer, media controls and the ⌃⌥N shortcut need nothing at all.

How do I update it?

AloeNotch checks once a day and tells you in the menu bar when something newer exists. Click Install to see what changed; it downloads, checks the update's signature, and reopens on the new version. Your settings and permissions carry over.