Best Mac notch apps in 2026, compared

Published November 9, 2026 · By Mahmoud Halat

The short answer

The best notch app depends on what you want the notch to do. For an all-in-one notch with widgets, a file tray and live activities, NotchNook is the most complete. For a free, open-source option, Boring Notch. To make the notch disappear, TopNotch, which is free.

Our picks: NotchNook for most people, Boring Notch as the best free notch app, Alcove or DynamicLake Pro for a polished Dynamic Island look, Droppy for a cheap all-rounder, TopNotch to hide the notch, MediaMate for nicer volume and music pop-ups, and Memory Notch for recording and transcription.

Memory Notch is our app. We put it in one category, the one it was built for, and we don’t rank it overall.

Checked November 9, 2026, on each app’s own site, App Store page, Gumroad page or GitHub repository. Prices in US dollars unless the seller only shows euros.

Mac notch apps at a glance

“Without a notch” means the vendor says the app works on a Mac or display that has no notch. “Not stated” means we couldn’t find an answer on the vendor’s own pages.

Four apps in the table are free: Boring Notch, Atoll, NotchDrop and TopNotch. Memory Notch has a free tier limited to five-minute recordings. “No” under open source means the vendor publishes no source code that we could find. Notchmeister, a free toy from The Iconfactory, is covered further down; it doesn’t do a job, so it isn’t in the table.

The best notch app for most people: NotchNook

NotchNook, from lo.cafe, turns the notch into a drop-down panel with widgets, a file tray and live activities. It comes in two editions:

• NotchNook Pro: a Liquid Glass look, all live activity types, a pocket and clipboard, a teleprompter and terminal, song lyrics, Pomodoro and to-dos, a file converter, a camera mirror, and approval prompts for Claude Code and Codex. $19 once or $3 a month. Apple silicon only.
• NotchNook Classic (v1.6.20): music controls, a calendar with join buttons for Meet, Zoom, Teams and Webex, notes, timers, the tray with AirDrop, and basic live activities. $15 once or $2 a month. Apple silicon and Intel.

Both need macOS 14.6 or later, come with a 48-hour trial, cover two Macs, and offer a refund within 7 days. The site says both work on Macs without a notch, including external displays. It’s the broadest feature set here, which is why it’s the default pick. It’s also not free, and some people find it more than they need.

Best free notch app: Boring Notch

Boring Notch is the best free notch app we found. It costs nothing, is open source under GPL-3.0, with about 11,300 stars on GitHub. It started as a music controller with a visualizer and now adds calendar, a file shelf with AirDrop, and a replacement for the macOS volume and brightness pop-ups.

• Needs: macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
• Install: a download from GitHub or Homebrew. The project has no Apple Developer account yet, so macOS warns about an unidentified developer on first launch, and the README explains how to allow it.
• Activity: the last stable release is v2.7.3, from November 24, 2025. A v2.8 release candidate followed on October 10, 2026, and code was pushed on November 9, 2026.

The README doesn’t say whether it runs on Macs without a notch.

Atoll is a second open-source choice. It credits Boring Notch as its foundation and adds system stats, clipboard history, a colour picker, timers, and live activities for Focus, screen recording, privacy indicators and charging. It’s free under GPL-3.0, needs macOS 14 or later, and its latest release is v2.3.3 from July 24, 2026. Its README lists “a MacBook with a notch” as a requirement.

Best for a Dynamic Island look: Alcove or DynamicLake Pro

Both aim to make the notch feel like the iPhone’s Dynamic Island.

Alcove focuses on smooth animation: live activities, notifications, swipe gestures, custom HUDs and lock screen widgets. It costs $12.99 once, with future updates included, on up to three devices. There’s a 72-hour trial and a 14-day refund. It needs macOS 15 or later, and the current version is 1.7. Its site doesn’t say whether it supports Macs without a notch.

DynamicLake Pro packs in more tools: notifications, calls, AirDrop, a timer, battery and calendar alerts, and an audio, video and document converter. Its Gumroad page lists $13.99 as a one-time payment with lifetime updates, three devices, macOS 14 or later, version 2.0, and support for MacBooks with and without a notch. Its own site shows a 20% discount but no price, so check before you buy.

Our Dynamic Island for Mac post compares what each one shows.

Best low-cost all-rounder: Droppy

Droppy costs $9.99 once, with a 3-day trial, a licence for two Macs, and a 14-day refund. It covers a lot for the price: live activities, a file tray, a clipboard manager, a floating music player, calendar, weather, system stats, Pomodoro, notes, screen recording, meeting controls and a monitor for coding agents. It also offers 41 free extensions it calls Droplets.

It needs macOS 14 or later and says it works on displays without a notch, such as iMacs and external monitors. Its page was updated on October 25, 2026.

Best for hiding the notch: TopNotch

TopNotch, from the team behind CleanShot, is free. It hides the notch by turning the strip around it black, so the notch blends in. It works with Dynamic Desktop wallpapers, across displays and Spaces, and can round the wallpaper’s corners. It needs macOS 11 or later.

macOS has its own partial option too. Our post on what you can do with the MacBook notch covers both.

Best for nicer pop-ups: MediaMate

MediaMate replaces the volume, display brightness and keyboard brightness pop-ups and adds a Now Playing panel. That panel can show inside the notch or in a separate bubble. It costs €6.99 once on Gumroad, for up to five devices, and needs macOS 13 or later. It does less than NotchNook, and that is the point.

Best free file shelf: NotchDrop

NotchDrop does one thing: drop files on the notch to hold them for a day, then open them or send them with AirDrop. It’s free on the Mac App Store, open source under MIT, and needs macOS 13 or later. The last App Store update is version 2.16, from November 25, 2024, so it’s stable but quiet.

Best for recording and transcription: Memory Notch

Memory Notch, our app, does a different job from the rest. Click the notch, start recording, and a live transcript appears with numbered speaker labels. You can fold the panel away and the recording keeps going, with an optional glow around the notch.

• What it records: your microphone and the Mac’s own audio, so both sides of a call, with no bot joining the meeting.
• Where it transcribes: on the Mac, with on-device speech models.
• What it saves: the audio as .m4a, a transcript and a Markdown note in ~/memory.
• Dictation: double-tap ⌘ in any app and say a phrase. Dictation is free, with or without a licence. See how dictation works.

It’s free for recordings up to five minutes, so it isn’t a free notch app in the way Boring Notch is. For unlimited length it’s $79 once, for up to five of your own Macs and PCs with a year of updates, or $7.99 a month. It needs an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 26 or later. A notch is optional: on other displays it shows as a capsule below the menu bar.

It isn’t a widget app. There’s no music player, calendar or file tray, and it writes no summaries. The features page lists what it does and doesn’t do.

Just for fun: Notchmeister

Notchmeister, from The Iconfactory, is free on the Mac App Store. It adds effects such as Glow, Cylon and Plasma Leak when your pointer passes under the notch. Macs without a notch get a fake one. It needs macOS 11 or later, and the current version is 1.0.7.

How to choose

Pick the job first, then the app:

1. Widgets and a tray: NotchNook, or Droppy for less money.
2. Free: Boring Notch, Atoll or NotchDrop.
3. Look and feel: Alcove or DynamicLake Pro.
4. No notch at all: TopNotch.
5. Record calls and talks: Memory Notch.

Two apps that both draw a panel at the notch may get in each other’s way, so try one at a time. If you already use NotchNook and want something different, our NotchNook alternatives post sorts the options by reason to switch.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• NotchNook, lo.cafe
• Boring Notch on GitHub
• Boring Notch releases
• Atoll on GitHub
• Alcove
• Alcove FAQs
• DynamicLake
• DynamicLake Pro on Gumroad
• Droppy
• NotchDrop on GitHub
• NotchDrop on the Mac App Store
• TopNotch
• MediaMate on Gumroad
• Notchmeister on the Mac App Store
• Memory Notch features
• Memory Notch specifications

Related posts

• Dynamic Island for Mac: the apps that add one
• NotchNook alternatives, by why you’d switch
• What can you do with the MacBook notch?
• Local AI note takers for Mac: what stays on it
• Memory Notch features

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