Your MacBook notch,
but useful.

Hover the notch — it pops open. Drop a file in, it sits there. Drag it out anywhere. Music. Pomodoro. Quick notes. Plug in, it cheers. Free. Open source. Blends invisibly with your hardware notch when collapsed.

↓ Download for macOS View on GitHub
macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon & Intel · ~504 KB · Free · MIT
The first time you open it, macOS shows a warning because this app is free (paid Apple developer accounts cost $99/year). On macOS Sequoia: open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. Step-by-step ↓
📥 Shelf 🎵 Music 🍅 Pomodoro 📝 Notes 🔋 Battery
📄essay.pdf
🖼vibe.png
📊budget.xlsx
📦build.zip
Hover above. The notch expands into a real, drag-droppable shelf.

📥 File shelf

Drop any file onto the notch — it sits there. Drag it out into Finder, email, Slack, anywhere. No copies, no syncing, no upload.

🎵 Music controls

Play / pause / skip directly from the notch. Album art + track info from Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, podcasts — anything with media keys.

🍅 Pomodoro timer

Built-in 25/5 focus timer with a glowing progress ring. Customize durations, count daily sessions, get a notification when each phase ends.

⚡ Charging peek

Plug in your MacBook — the notch briefly expands with a battery cheer. Auto-collapses after 4 seconds. Like AirPods, but for power.

📝 Quick Notes

Auto-saving scratchpad inside the notch. Type, switch tabs, close the notch — your text is still there next time. Debounced 600ms so it never thrashes the disk.

⚙️ Highly customizable

Show / hide / reorder tabs. Tweak hover & collapse delay. Auto-hide in fullscreen. Launch at login. Strict-mode Pomodoro. Daily session goals. 16+ knobs.

🫥 Blends with the notch

The collapsed shape is the same width and corner radius as your hardware notch. Continuous (squircle) corners, pure black, no border. Invisible until you hover.

🚀 Native & tiny

SwiftUI + AppKit. ~1MB binary, ~410KB zipped. No Electron, no JavaScript. Boots before your menu bar finishes painting.

🔓 Free forever

MIT licensed. No subscription. No login. NotchNook charges $25 — this does the same things and costs nothing.

How it stacks up

Feature
NotchPop
NotchNook
Boring Notch
Price
Free
$24.99
Free
Open source
Yes (MIT)
No
Yes
File shelf
✓
✓
Limited
Music controls (play/skip)
✓
✓
Read-only
Pomodoro timer
✓
No
No
Charging peek
✓
✓
✓
Customizable tabs
✓
Partial
Partial
Login required
No
Yes
No
Install

Download it like any other Mac app.

No setup. No Terminal. No technical stuff. Just a tiny 248 KB file.

1
Download

Tap the button below. Your browser saves NotchPop.zip. Double-click it to unzip — you'll get NotchPop.app (the blue rectangle icon).

↓ Download NotchPop.zip · 504 KB
2
Drag to Applications

Drag NotchPop.app into your /Applications folder, like you would with any other Mac app you downloaded. That's it — installed.

3
Open it (the first time)

Double-click NotchPop.app — macOS shows a security warning saying it can't verify the app. Click "Done" in that dialog (don't move it to Trash).

Then open System Settings → Privacy & Security. Scroll down — you'll see a message "NotchPop was blocked". Click "Open Anyway", then "Open" in the next dialog.

After this, double-click works normally. macOS adds the app to its allow-list permanently.

Once it's open, the notch auto-expands for 5 seconds with a welcome card so you can see what it does. Hover the notch any time to use it. Look for the rectangle icon in your menu bar (top-right) for Settings, Pomodoro reset, and Quit.
Why is this so annoying? Apple charges $99/year for a Developer ID that lets unsigned apps open with a single click. NotchPop is free and open-source, so we skip that fee — at the cost of one extra click on first launch. Same friction as HandBrake, OBS, and most other free Mac apps.
Developers: build from source instead →

If you'd rather build it yourself, you'll need Homebrew and either Xcode 15+ from the App Store OR just Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install — much smaller). 

$ git clone https://github.com/bendawg2010/NotchPop.git
$ cd NotchPop
$ ./scripts/build.sh
  1. The script auto-installs xcodegen via Homebrew, generates the Xcode project, and runs xcodebuild in Release.
  2. Move build/Build/Products/Release/NotchPop.app into /Applications.
View on GitHub All releases