Top.Notch
Free, open-source notch app for macOS. A Dynamic Island style alternative to NotchNook, built with SwiftUI.
top.notchWhat it is
Top.Notch turns the MacBook notch into something useful. It has no dock icon and no window. When nothing is happening it shrinks to exactly the size of the hardware notch and disappears. When music plays, it grows a small shoulder on each side of the camera housing with the album art, a live waveform, and a progress line. Move the cursor near it and it opens into a Liquid Glass panel with four panes:
- Music: system-wide Now Playing controls that work the same for Apple Music, Spotify, a browser tab, or a podcast app.
- Drop: a temporary shelf for files you’re about to move somewhere else. Items expire and get purged.
- Notes: a plain text scratchpad, encrypted at rest, with private notes behind Touch ID.
- Focus: a pomodoro timer whose progress ring and countdown stay parked in the idle notch while it runs.
Everything stays local. There’s no account, no analytics, and the only network traffic is the update check. It’s free and MIT licensed.
Why I built it
I wanted a Dynamic Island style utility on my Mac and I didn’t want to pay a subscription for one, so I built the version I’d be happy to use every day and put it on GitHub. It was also a good excuse to go deep on native macOS development after years on the web.
Architecture
It’s a native Swift 6 and SwiftUI app targeting macOS 26, built entirely with Swift Package Manager. There’s deliberately no Xcode project:
a generated .pbxproj can’t be merged cleanly, and I wanted several people (and agents) to be able to work on the repo in parallel without conflicts.
A small script bundles the .app, and releases are Developer ID signed, notarized, and shipped as a DMG with Sparkle handling self-updates from GitHub releases.
The code is split into modules with strict boundaries: NotchCore holds contracts, design tokens, and motion; NotchShell owns the window,
the idle bar, the proximity detection, and the pane host; and each pane (PaneMusic, PaneDrop, PaneNotes, PaneFocus) is its own package that
can’t reach into the others. Now Playing reads from the private MediaRemote framework through a pinned adapter, with an AppleScript fallback
for Spotify and Apple Music when that isn’t available.
Tech stack
- Swift 6.2, SwiftUI, Swift Package Manager
- Sparkle for updates, MediaRemote adapter for Now Playing
- Developer ID signing and notarization, DMG distribution
- A static marketing site on GitHub Pages
Try it
This is the notch, rebuilt in HTML from the same geometry and motion the app uses. Move your cursor near it and it breathes; hover it and it opens. Switch panes with the pills or the arrow keys, press play, start the pomodoro and close it to see the timer park on the left.
Hover the notch.Tap the notch. Arrow keys switch panes, Esc closes. Press play to hear nothing, it is a replica.
The real idle bar while music is playing
Closing thoughts
Top.Notch is small on purpose. The goal was a tool that stays out of the way and costs nothing in the background, and most of the work went into making it disappear properly rather than adding features. It also reminded me how much I enjoy building things that I use myself, which is a big part of why it exists.