Free · Open source · macOS 13+ · Apple silicon

Your notch, now a Dynamic Island.

NotchIsland lives inside the MacBook notch and grows out of it: what's playing, what just arrived, what's charging, what's next. One black surface, flush with the bezel, that only shows up when it has something to say.

Download for Mac .dmg · v1.3.2 · 2.0 MB View on GitHub

MIT licensed · no accounts, no analytics · updates itself from GitHub Releases

The shade: clock, quick toggles, a running timer, the next calendar event with a Join button, Now Playing with transport and volume, a shelf of files, clipboard history and notifications grouped by app

Live, where you're already looking

Everything that matters right now, right under the notch.

Hover for a glance, click for the full shade, press ⌥ Space to launch anything. The island stays true black so it blends with the bezel and disappears when it's idle.

Now Playing, from anywhere

The TV app, Music, Podcasts, QuickTime Player, Spotify, VLC and whatever is playing in Safari or any Chromium browser: Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera. Anything that publishes to Control Center shows up, no permission needed. Every app, and every browser tab with media, is its own source; the island follows the stream that started last and lets you switch with a tap. Artwork in the ear, bouncing bars while it plays, a scrubber, transport and the system volume slider.

A real notification shade

Banners drop out of the notch, then collect in a shade grouped by app with history, Clear and Clear All. Private messages stay on your Mac: it reads Notification Center's own store.

Live activities

Charger in or out, low battery, volume changes, AirPods connecting with left, right and case battery, downloads with real progress, a finished timer. Long-running ones shrink into a ring in the ear.

`⌥` `Space` launcher

Fuzzy app search ranked by what you open most, Spotlight file search, a calculator, unit conversion and quick actions like lock, sleep or dark mode. The hotkey is swallowed, so nothing else hears it.

Timer and next event

Pomodoro presets with a countdown ring in the ear and a chime at the end. Your next calendar event sits in the shade with a one-tap Join for Zoom, Meet, Teams and friends.

Shelf

Drag files onto the notch to park them. Drag them back out into any app later, open them, or AirDrop the whole shelf in one go.

Quick toggles and Focus

Dark Mode, Keep Awake, Wi-Fi and a camera check for calls. The Focus tile mirrors the system, lighting up with “Do Not Disturb” or whatever mode you're in.

Mic, camera, Focus indicators

Small coloured marks beside the notch tell you when the microphone or camera is live, when a Focus is on and when the display is being kept awake.

Private by design

No account, no server, no analytics. Everything is read from your own Mac. The one network request is a daily look at GitHub Releases for a new version, which sends nothing about you and can be switched off.

One surface, many states

It only grows as much as it needs to.

Idle, the island is just the notch. Everything below flows out of it with the same width and the same black, so the notch and whatever drops down always read as one thing.

Compact: album art on the left ear, bouncing level bars on the right — **Compact**Artwork and level bars in the ears while something plays.

Live activity: AirPods Pro connected with left, right and case battery — **Live activity**AirPods, charger, volume, downloads: a short HUD, then gone.

A Messages banner dropping out of the notch — **Banner**Notifications drop in from the notch. Tap to open, swipe on.

Hover: clock and date, a Do Not Disturb chip, battery, unread bell, Now Playing and the last message — **Hover**A glance: clock, Focus, battery, unread count, timer, event, media.

Launcher: typing 5 km to mi shows the conversion result — **Launcher**Apps, files, maths, units and actions from `⌥` `Space`.

Install

Up and running in a minute.

NotchIsland is a tiny, self-contained app. It needs macOS 13 Ventura or later and a Mac with Apple silicon (every notched MacBook has one).

Download and drag

Open NotchIsland.dmg and drag NotchIsland into Applications. It runs as a menu bar app, with no Dock icon.

Open it the first time

macOS will say it "could not verify NotchIsland is free of malware": the app is not notarized. On macOS 15 and later click Done, then System Settings → Privacy & Security → scroll to "NotchIsland was blocked" → Open Anyway. On macOS 13 and 14, right-click NotchIsland in Applications → Open. Or in Terminal: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/NotchIsland.app

Grant what you use

Full Disk Access for notifications: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access → turn on NotchIsland (click + and pick it from Applications if it is not listed), then relaunch. The island shows a hint until then; click it to jump there. Accessibility for the hotkey is asked on first launch, Automation the first time a player is read, Calendar and Camera when you first use them. Settings → Permissions shows the state of each.

Stay current

That is the last download. NotchIsland checks GitHub once a day and tells you in the island when a new version is out. Settings → Updates shows what's new, and Update Now installs it in place: it keeps every permission you granted and never shows the Gatekeeper dialog, since nothing goes through a browser.

Why the extra click? Only apps notarized through a paid Apple Developer ID open silently. NotchIsland is free and open source and signed with its own certificate, so Gatekeeper asks you to confirm the first launch, once. The DMG includes a "Read me first" with the same steps. You can also build it yourself in under a minute: see below.

Allowed in System Settings but not working? macOS ties each permission to the build that asked for it. A grant made to an earlier version with a different signature stays switched on in the list but no longer applies, and flipping it changes nothing. Since 1.1.1 NotchIsland clears such entries on its first launch after an update and asks again; if a row in Settings → Permissions still carries the orange was granted to an earlier build mark, click Reset… next to it and allow it again. Entries with a terminal icon are leftovers from a development build.

Open source

Swift, SwiftUI and nothing else.

One Swift package, no dependencies, MIT licensed. Clone it, run it, read every line that touches your notifications. Issues and pull requests are welcome.

Swift 5.9SwiftUI + AppKitmacOS 13+MITNo dependencies

# run from source
git clone https://github.com/Edwardrem/NotchIsland.git
cd NotchIsland
swift run

# or build the .app and .dmg yourself
scripts/make-dmg.sh 1.3.2

About the maker

Built by Rufaro Edward Mutepfa.

NotchIsland started as a small itch: the notch takes up space on every MacBook, so it may as well earn it. It is built and maintained in the open.

Rufaro Edward Mutepfa

Creator and maintainer of NotchIsland

If NotchIsland saves you a glance at the menu bar, say hello. If something is off, open an issue on GitHub and it will get looked at.

Connect on LinkedIn @Edwardrem on GitHub