Changelog

AloeNotch is actively developed. Here's what's changed.

0.8.5 — August 14, 2026

• A calmer way to lay out the panel. Settings → Appearance → Layout now offers One at a time: a single module filling the panel, with pills to switch between them. Bigger artwork, transport controls you don't have to aim at, a scrubber showing time remaining, and three upcoming events instead of one truncated line.
• Your panel is unchanged unless you ask. The existing side-by-side layout is still the default — this is a choice, not a replacement. Seeing everything at once and seeing one thing clearly are both reasonable things to want.

0.8.4 — August 14, 2026

• AloeNotch now tells you when there's a new version. It checks once a day and, if something newer exists, shows it in the menu bar and in Settings → About. It never interrupts you, and there's a switch to turn it off.
• This is the first release that can tell you about the next one — so from here on you won't have to remember to come back and look.

0.8.3 — August 14, 2026

• The panel opens as one object. The notch now grows first and its contents follow a beat behind, cascading in rather than appearing all at once. Closing does the same in reverse, so nothing pops.
• Softer corners. The panel's curves are continuous now, matching the way macOS draws its own rounded shapes — no more slight pinch where the curve meets the straight edge.
• Easier to read. A proper type scale replaces the dozen slightly-different text sizes that had accumulated, with nothing smaller than 10pt. Spacing follows a consistent rhythm.
• More room. The default panel is wider, so the columns aren't fighting for space. If you've already set your own width, yours is kept — widen it in Settings → General if things feel tight.
• The clock now rolls over to the next minute instead of blinking.

0.8.2 — August 10, 2026

• Permissions stay granted from now on. Every previous release was signed in a way that made macOS treat each update as a brand-new app, so Calendar, Location and Accessibility were quietly forgotten every time you updated. That's fixed. You'll need to grant them once more after installing this version — the last time.
• Fixed: Now Playing said "unavailable" even when music was playing. AloeNotch was checking whether its media helper worked using a command that could never succeed, so it disabled itself unnecessarily.
• Fixed: the Calendar and Location buttons did nothing. The app was missing two entitlements it needed to ask for those, and macOS refuses such requests silently — no prompt, no error.
• Plugging in the charger now shows a brief bolt and your charge level in the notch.
• Volume and brightness steps tap the trackpad, the shelf opens to catch a dragged file, and the equalizer settles when playback pauses.

0.8.1 — July 31, 2026

• Fixed: the Calendar and Location buttons didn't do anything. Granting either from Settings or during setup now works. If you tried in 0.8.0 and nothing happened, this was why.
• Granting access now takes effect straight away — your next event and the weather appear without restarting AloeNotch.
• When a permission has already been denied, AloeNotch says so and points at System Settings, rather than offering a button macOS will ignore.

0.8.0 — July 29, 2026

• The panel moves as one piece. Album artwork now travels out of the notch and grows into the panel as you hover, instead of the small and large versions swapping over.
• No more stutter when you skip a track. Cover art is decoded off the main thread now — it used to take roughly three quarters of a frame at exactly the moment the artwork was trying to crossfade.
• A real Settings window. Five tabs — General, Modules, Appearance, Access and About — with an accent colour, panel width, glass intensity and animation speed. Every module can be switched on or off individually, including battery, which previously couldn't.
• It responds to you. Hover and press feedback across the panel, the shelf opens to catch a dragged file, and the trackpad taps on drop and on each volume or brightness step.
• A proper introduction. First launch is now a short animated walkthrough that demonstrates the hover gesture — with a pointer that moves — and asks for permissions in context, explaining what each one is for.
• Reduce Motion and Reduce Transparency are respected throughout, and take effect immediately without a relaunch.
• The equalizer settles when playback pauses instead of bouncing regardless, and the panel no longer stops responding to the pointer while it's still visibly open.

0.7.0 — July 27, 2026

• Liquid Glass throughout. The welcome screen, the menu bar panel and the Settings window are now translucent — your desktop shows through, frosted, instead of a flat grey slab.
• Glass is optional. Some wallpapers make translucent panels hard to read, so there's a switch — offered during onboarding and in Settings — that turns everything back to solid.
• Settings is now tabbed. Features, Position, General and About, behind a floating glass tab bar. Everything used to live in one long scroll where half of it sat below the fold.
• A rebuilt welcome screen with a looping animation of the notch opening, so the hover gesture is obvious before you've tried it.
• Ambient Glow now lights up in step with the panel instead of arriving a beat late — the artwork's color lands as the panel finishes opening.
• Requires macOS 26, and Apple Silicon. Liquid Glass is a macOS 26 API, so this release raises the minimum, and the build is now Apple Silicon only. 0.6.0 is the final release for Intel Macs and macOS 15 — still downloadable and still working, but frozen.

0.6.0 — July 20, 2026

• Volume and brightness, in the notch. Tap the volume or brightness keys and the readout appears in the notch — icon and level bar — instead of the big grey square in the middle of your screen.
• It genuinely replaces the macOS HUD rather than doubling up. That needs Accessibility access so AloeNotch can catch the keys first; until you grant it, macOS's own HUD is left alone and Settings shows a one-tap prompt.
• Smoother open and close. Retuned the animation and removed an expensive per-frame blur, so the panel settles cleanly.
• Fixed the panel briefly ghosting outside the notch while closing.

0.5.0 — July 20, 2026

• A glance at what's playing. While music is playing, the notch quietly grows a little on each side to show the album artwork and a small animated equalizer — tinted with the artwork's own color.
• Still invisible when idle. The moment playback stops, it shrinks back to hugging the notch exactly, so there's nothing to see until there's something to say.
• Hovering the peeked-out glyph opens the full panel, same as the notch.

0.4.0 — July 20, 2026

• A proper welcome. AloeNotch is invisible until you hover it — so first launch now introduces itself, with a looping animation that shows you the gesture. No more wondering whether it installed.
• Permissions, in context. Calendar and location access are now requested after the welcome instead of the instant you launch, so you know what you're saying yes to.
• Set up launch-at-login right from the welcome, and re-open it anytime from Settings → General.

0.3.0 — July 19, 2026

• Redesigned panel. A cleaner, more horizontal layout — now playing, a calendar week strip, and the shelf sit side by side.
• Calendar week strip. The month plus a 7-day view centered on today (today highlighted), with your next event beneath it.
• Richer Now Playing. Bigger album art with a badge showing which app the audio is coming from.
• Settings in the panel. A gear in the corner opens preferences directly — no digging through the menu bar.

0.2.0 — July 19, 2026

• Song scrubber. Now Playing shows a live progress bar with elapsed / total time — drag it to seek.
• The shelf remembers. Staged files now persist across launches, and a new Drag all handle pulls every file out at once.
• Settings window. A proper preferences window: toggle each module, launch at login, and nudge the panel's horizontal position.
• Tighter layout. The expanded panel is more compact and better spaced for the content it holds.

0.1.0 — July 17, 2026

• First release: a Dynamic Island-style panel that hugs the MacBook notch and expands on hover.
• Now Playing from any app — Apple Music, Spotify, and even YouTube in a browser — with transport controls and an ambient glow drawn from the artwork's color.
• Drop shelf for staging files, plus calendar, weather, battery, and a live clock at a glance.
• Menu-bar switchboard to show or hide each module.

Follow along or file ideas on GitHub.