Mac notch apps compared: which one to pick

Updated 29 September 2026.

The MacBook notch is the only part of your screen that is always visible and always doing nothing. The apps on this page give it a job: music controls, somewhere to park a file, clipboard history, your next calendar event.

There are now more than a dozen of them, and most “best notch apps” lists are written by one of the apps being ranked. This one is too, so the conflict of interest is on the table from the first line: FloatPill is ours. Below are ten worth knowing, with prices checked at the source, what each one is good at, and the cases where the answer is not ours.

What a notch app actually does

They all start from the same idea: move the pointer to the notch and a panel drops down. What is inside it varies, but the same functions come up again and again.

• Music controls. Title, artwork and transport buttons without opening Spotify or Music. Almost every one of them has this.
• A place to park files. Drag something into the notch and it waits there instead of cluttering the desktop.
• Clipboard history. The thing you copied before the last thing, which macOS does not keep on its own.
• Calendar and timers, so the next event or the end of a focus block is visible without switching windows.
• HUD replacement: volume and brightness drawn in the notch instead of in the middle of your screen.
• AI usage, a newer arrival: how much of your Claude or Codex limit is left, at a glance.

The ten, at a glance

Checked on 29 September 2026 against each app’s own site, its App Store page or its repository. A dash means the developer does not state it. Prices and features change often in this category: verify before you decide.

FloatPill: ours, so it goes first

Here is where we are not the answer. If you want to spend nothing, Boring Notch, Atoll and NotchBox are free. If you want open source, Boring Notch or Atoll. If you have more than two Macs, NotchNook covers five. If your Mac does not run in English, Italian or Spanish, most of the others speak your language and we do not.

What it does that is harder to find elsewhere:

• A YouTube video, moved from the browser into the notch. It picks up at the second the tab had reached, pauses the tab so nothing plays twice, and hands back when you are done. Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi and Arc. How it works.
• Clipboard history that is careful about passwords, including the copies macOS leaves unmarked: it also refuses anything copied while a password manager is in front. What we measured.
• Voice memos that come back as text, with the audio normalised first so a memo taken at arm’s length from the built-in mic is still readable.
• Claude and Codex in one place: how much of each limit is left, read from the apps already on your Mac with no sign-in, and an alert when Claude Code or Codex finishes or needs you. Details.

Plus a file tray, calendar and reminders, a focus timer, Spotify and Apple Music controls and a webcam mirror. €9.99 once, no subscription, with seven days free that ask for no account, no email and no card.

The free ones

Boring Notch: free and open source

Music with a visualizer, calendar, a file shelf with AirDrop and HUDs. Almost eleven thousand stars on GitHub and a GPL licence: you can read every line before you run it.

The one real friction is installing it. The builds are neither signed nor notarized, so on first launch macOS refuses to open it. The project documents two ways past that: Open Anyway in System Settings › Privacy & Security, or a Terminal command.

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Boring Notch.app"

Both tell macOS to stop checking that app. For open-source code you can read it is a reasonable trade; just be clear about what it is.

Atoll: open source, with system stats

Also free and GPL, with about five thousand stars: media controls, live CPU, GPU and memory, clipboard history, timers and lock screen widgets. Open source with a system monitor built in.

NotchBox: free on the App Store

Free on the Mac App Store, with a $4.99 Pro upgrade: music, a file drop, timers, calendar, clipboard, a camera mirror and a network meter, in seventeen languages. Runs on macOS 13.

The paid ones

NotchNook: the best known, and the one for several Macs

The app that made the category known: media, calendar, a file tray, a webcam preview and Shortcuts. $25 once covers five Macs, the most here, or $3 a month for two, and it is in Setapp. macOS 14.6. We compared it with FloatPill in detail in FloatPill vs NotchNook.

Alcove: for looks

Picked for its animations: live activities, a Now Playing visualizer, HUDs and lock screen widgets. $14.99 once. It now needs macOS 15.

MacNotch: the most configurable

From a quiet media strip to a full dashboard, with modules for day progress, screen time, health and notifications you can reply to. $22.99 once or $3.99 a month, macOS 14.

DynamicLake Pro

Calendar and weather, music with a queue, live activities for calls, Bluetooth alerts and a timer. $13.99 once; no trial, but a refund window.

Droppy: the file shelf, and a lot more

Built around moving files: a notch shelf and a floating basket, plus clipboard, media, HUDs and free extensions from OCR to voice transcription. $9.99 once for two Macs, three-day trial, macOS 14.

MediaMate: only the HUDs

Not a full notch app: iPhone-style volume and brightness indicators, optionally in the notch, and music controls. A few euros once, with a free version.

How to choose

• You want a YouTube video under the notch, transcribed voice memos, or Claude and Codex limits with done alerts: FloatPill.
• You want open source: Boring Notch, or Atoll if you also want system stats. See also FloatPill vs Boring Notch.
• You only install from the App Store: NotchBox.
• You have more than two Macs, or already pay for Setapp: NotchNook.
• You care most about how it looks and run macOS 15: Alcove.
• You want to configure every module: MacNotch.
• You mostly move files around: Droppy.
• You only want nicer volume and brightness overlays: MediaMate.

Two things worth knowing before you install any of them

None of them draws inside the cutout. On a MacBook with a notch that area is an absence of screen, not black screen. What these apps do is open a borderless window tucked under the cutout, drawn to match its exact measurements: at rest it blends into the notch, and when you open it a panel drops down. The effect is convincing; the mechanism is different from what it looks like.

Most of them work without a notch too. On an iMac, a Mac mini or an external display they draw a shape of the same proportions against the top edge and behave the same way. The notch is where they hide, not what they need.

What they cost in battery

This is the right question to ask, and the one most pages skip. An app that is always running and animating something over a large translucent panel can cost real battery: the expensive part is not the size of the thing that moves, it is that the whole blurred region has to be redrawn.

Ask for a measured number rather than a reassurance. Ours: with music playing and the media card on screen, FloatPill measured 0.33% CPU on an M-series MacBook Pro, down from 6.4% before the animations were moved to Core Animation. With nothing playing it sits near zero.

Try FloatPill, 7 days free See what it does

More guides: FloatPill vs NotchNook · FloatPill vs Boring Notch · YouTube picture in picture on Mac · Clipboard history that skips passwords · Claude usage limits on Mac · Dynamic Island on Mac · How to use the MacBook notch. All names are trademarks of their owners.