Changelog

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.