NotchNook alternatives, by why you’d switch

Published November 9, 2026 · By Mahmoud Halat

The short answer

The right NotchNook alternative depends on why you want to leave.

For free and open source, Boring Notch or Atoll. For a cheaper paid all-rounder, Droppy. For one small job, NotchDrop or MediaMate. To hide the notch instead of using it, TopNotch. To record and transcribe calls from the notch, Memory Notch.

NotchNook itself is a good app, and for many people it’s the one to keep. The reasons below are the ones that make people look elsewhere.

Checked November 9, 2026, on each app’s own site, App Store page, Gumroad page or GitHub repository.

What NotchNook does well

NotchNook, from lo.cafe, turns the notch into a panel with widgets, a file tray and live activities. It has two editions:

• NotchNook Pro: $19 once or $3 a month. A Liquid Glass look, all live activity types, a clipboard, a teleprompter and terminal, lyrics, Pomodoro and to-dos, a file converter, and approval prompts for Claude Code and Codex. Apple silicon only.
• NotchNook Classic: $15 once or $2 a month. Music, a calendar with join buttons for video calls, notes, timers, the tray with AirDrop, and basic live activities. Apple silicon and Intel.

Both need macOS 14.6 or later, include a 48-hour trial, cover two Macs, and work on Macs without a notch. If price and features suit you, there may be no reason to switch.

NotchNook alternatives at a glance

“No” under open source means we found no published source code. Full details on each app are in our best Mac notch apps roundup.

Free and open-source NotchNook alternatives

Boring Notch is the best free NotchNook alternative we found. It’s the best-known free option, with about 11,300 GitHub stars and a GPL-3.0 licence. It covers music with a visualizer, calendar, a file shelf with AirDrop, and replacement volume and brightness pop-ups. Its last stable release is v2.7.3 from November 24, 2025, with a v2.8 release candidate out on October 10, 2026. It isn’t signed with an Apple Developer account yet, so you have to allow it in System Settings on first launch.

Atoll builds on Boring Notch’s code and adds system stats, clipboard history, a colour picker and more live activities. It’s free under GPL-3.0, and its latest release is v2.3.3 from July 24, 2026. Its README lists a notch MacBook as a requirement, unlike NotchNook.

What you give up: NotchNook Pro’s extras, such as the converter, the teleprompter and the coding-agent prompts.

If you want something cheaper

Droppy costs $9.99 once, about half of NotchNook Pro’s one-time price. It still covers live activities, a file tray, a clipboard manager, a floating player, calendar, weather, Pomodoro, notes, screen recording and meeting controls, plus 41 free extensions. It has a 3-day trial, a licence for two Macs, and support for displays without a notch.

If you want something lighter

Some people only use one part of NotchNook. A single-purpose app does that part with less going on.

• NotchDrop: drop files on the notch, keep them for a day, and AirDrop them. Free on the Mac App Store, MIT-licensed. Its last update was version 2.16, on November 25, 2024.
• MediaMate: replaces the volume and brightness pop-ups and adds a Now Playing panel in the notch or a bubble. €6.99 once, up to five devices.

If you want a closer copy of the iPhone

Alcove puts its effort into animation and feel: live activities, notifications, swipe gestures, custom HUDs and lock screen widgets. It’s $12.99 once on up to three devices, with a 72-hour trial, and needs macOS 15 or later.

DynamicLake Pro adds notifications, calls, a timer, battery and calendar alerts, and a file converter. Its Gumroad page lists $13.99 once for three devices, macOS 14 or later, and support with or without a notch. Our Dynamic Island for Mac post compares what each shows.

If you’d rather the notch disappeared

TopNotch, from the team behind CleanShot, is free and makes the strip around the notch black, so the notch blends into the menu bar. It needs macOS 11 or later and works across displays and Spaces. macOS also has a per-app setting that keeps an app below the camera. Our post on what you can do with the MacBook notch explains both.

If you want the notch to do real work

Most notch apps show you things: a song, a timer, a file. Memory Notch, our app, records.

Click the notch to start. You get a live transcript with numbered speaker labels, written on the Mac with on-device speech models. Close the panel and the recording carries on, with an optional glow around the notch. It records your microphone and the Mac’s audio, so both sides of a call, with no bot joining the meeting.

Each recording is saved as .m4a audio, a transcript and a Markdown note in ~/memory. Double-tap ⌘ to dictate into any app; dictation is free, with or without a licence.

It isn’t a free NotchNook alternative in the full sense: recordings are free up to five minutes, then it’s $79 once for unlimited length, for up to five of your own Macs and PCs, with a year of updates. It needs an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 26 or later; without a notch, it shows as a capsule below the menu bar.

It doesn’t replace NotchNook’s widgets. There’s no music player, calendar or tray, and no automatic summaries. Both apps use the notch, so test them together before relying on that. The features page has the full list.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

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

Related posts

• Best Mac notch apps in 2026, compared
• Dynamic Island for Mac: the apps that add one
• What can you do with the MacBook notch?
• Granola AI alternatives, by why you’d switch
• Memory Notch features

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