Phil Vishnevsky

app · Oct 2026

NotchApp

Turns the MacBook notch into a live, interactive hub — music, alerts, stats and search, all in the space the camera leaves behind.

Source

A macOS app that makes the notch useful. Closed, it is a black shape that blends into the hardware. Hover and it springs open into Liquid Glass, with music, the calendar, stats, a shelf for files and a search bar inside.

Native Swift, with SwiftUI and AppKit for the interface and Core Animation for the glass and the motion. It targets Apple silicon on macOS, and it is built with the Command Line Tools alone — there is no Xcode project.

  • The open notch with now playing, weather, a meeting and a task home
  • Search finding a pitch deck from a vague description search: files
  • A web answer about the Golden Gate Bridge with sources search: web
  • Instant answers for time zones, percentages, units and day counts search: instant
  • Three Glance layouts, each full and compact glances
  • A Flash and three Banners under the notch alerts
  • The Shelf with files beside AirDrop and Taildrop shelf
  • Clipboard history clipboard
  • Tasks with due times and links tasks
  • Controls with twelve tiles controls
  • Per-app volume faders mixer
  • CPU, GPU, memory and power cards stats
  • The disk Cleaner cleaner
  • Coding-agent token usage and API value agents

Glances

Up to five small live indicators on each side of the closed notch: music, a timer, CPU and GPU, temperature, power, battery, the next event, network, VPN. Each has a compact form, and a crowded side compacts its outer ones by itself. Click one to act on it, hold it for the details.

Alerts in three tiers

  • Flashes appear in the wings for something momentary — volume, brightness, charging.
  • Banners drop under the notch and queue behind one another.
  • Prompts carry buttons, like “Join Zoom”, and fold into a tab when you do not answer, so they are still there later.

The best part: one bar that works out what you mean. Describe a file the way you remember it (“the pitch deck I sent Maya last week”) and it finds it on the Mac. Ask a question and it answers from the web, with numbered sources. Ask for the weather anywhere. Type a sum, a conversion, a time zone or a day count and the answer is there before you finish. The AI runs locally through Ollama, so nothing goes to a cloud model.

The rest of it

  • Music with a visualizer tinted by the artwork and an audio output switcher. It works with Music, Spotify and browsers; on macOS 15.4 and later MediaRemote is reached through a dylib loaded by perl.
  • Shelf for dragging files in and out, with AirDrop and Taildrop (Tailscale) drop zones, clipboard history, and conversions for video, GIF, audio and images.
  • Stats cards read from the SMC and IOReport directly, with no helper and no root.
  • Controls tiles for Keep Awake, the mic, a color picker, OCR Copy Text, ports, a cleaner and Night Shift, plus Homebrew and Sparkle update checks.
  • A per-app volume mixer built on a Core Audio process tap.
  • Tools for a network speed test, VPN status, a disk cleaner and app uninstaller, and device batteries.
  • Agents shows Claude Code and Codex sessions and their token usage, with the API-equivalent cost.
  • Tasks, notes, a teleprompter, and a timer with Pomodoro.
  • Keyboard shortcuts for every tab.

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