AloeNotch
NewVersion 0.14.1 — 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 tour

Apple Silicon · macOS 26 or later · 2.0 MB

Style
Bounce
New in 0.13

Glass, lyrics, and a notch
that listens.

The panel frosts your desktop, the song's words scroll by under its title, and the bars finally move to the music.

A glass notch

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 notch

The line being sung, right under the track title. Looked up by song name on LRCLIB — and one switch turns it off.

An equalizer that listens

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

A timer and your music, side by side

Start a timer while something plays and it pinches off into its own bubble beside the notch, then melts back in when it is done.

Swipe on the notch

Two fingers down to open it, up to close it, and sideways to skip a track.

Join calls from the notch

Zoom, Meet, Teams and more get a Join button ten minutes before they start. One click and you are in.

Choose your screen

With more than one display, pick where the notch lives in Settings → General. On a screen without a notch, AloeNotch draws its own.

2.0 MBto download
37 MBmemory in use
<1%of one core, idle
MITopen source

Everything the notch
should have been.

Now Playing, everywhere

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

Motion you can dial

Calm, Standard or Lively — decide how much the panel overshoots when it opens. Closing never bounces, because the collapsed strip has to land on the notch exactly.

The Shelf

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

Ambient Glow

The artwork's color traces the panel's edge — a thin line of light that hugs the notch, like the music is leaking out of the screen.

Your day, at a glance

The next 24 hours of your calendar, local weather and a live clock in the expanded panel's header. No widgets, no Mission Control.

Battery, beautifully

Charge level with a charging shimmer, a bolt while plugged in and a quiet red warning when you're running low.

A timer, in the notch

Start one from the panel and it takes over the collapsed strip while it counts down. Pause it, add a minute, or let it ring.

The last 24 things you copied

Click one to copy it again. Kept in memory only — never written to disk, and anything a password manager marks private is skipped.

Open it without the mouse

⌃⌥N opens and closes the panel from anywhere, and holds it open until you press it again. No Accessibility permission needed.

Send sound anywhere

The header turns into a device picker when there's more than one output. Pick AirPods or your speakers and everything follows.

Invisible by design

Collapsed, it hugs the hardware notch to the pixel — pure black, nothing added. Settings live in a small menu bar switchboard.

The whole tour,
in forty-five seconds.

Every feature, the redesigned settings and the new motion — with a soundtrack, if you turn it on.

Demo video coming soon

Free, without the asterisk.

The other good notch apps are worth their money — they run about $15 to $25. AloeNotch is free in the way that actually matters: no trial that expires, no licence key, no Pro tier holding a feature back, no account to make, 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.
  • Two network requests, both optional. The weather for your approximate location, and a once-a-day check for a new version. That's the complete list, and either can be switched off.
  • Clipboard history never touches the disk. It lives in memory, clears when the app quits, and skips anything a password manager marks private.
  • The keyboard shortcut needs no Accessibility permission. Only replacing the volume and brightness HUD does, and that's off until you turn it on.
AloeNotch icon

Get AloeNotch

Version 0.14.1 · Apple Silicon · macOS 26 or later · what’s new

Download free · 3.0 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.

What permissions does it need?

None, to start with. Calendar and Location are asked for only when you switch those modules on, and Accessibility only if you want the notch to replace the macOS volume and brightness HUD. Everything else — the shelf, the clipboard, the timer, media controls, sound output — needs nothing at all.

Is it really free? What's the catch?

There isn't one. It's MIT licensed and open source, there's no paid tier, and nothing in the app asks you for money. It's a side project, not a business.

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.

Does it work on an Intel Mac?

Not the current version. 0.6.0 is the last build for Intel Macs and macOS 15, and it still works, but it doesn't get new features or fixes. There's a download link for it above.

Will it slow my Mac down?

It shouldn't. Idle, it sits under one percent of a single core and around 37 MB of memory, and the whole app is about four megabytes on disk.