Your Mac's notch, reimagined. AI commands + media + calendar + file shelf — all in one place. Free. Open source. MIT.
Status: alpha (v0.4 "The Morph"). The notch foundation, AI command bar, battery HUD, calendar, file shelf, swipe gestures, multi-display support, and a spring-driven state-machine core are built and tested in CI. Now Playing, custom HUDs, live activities, and notification mirroring are next — the full ladder to v1.0 lives in docs/PARITY-ROADMAP.md. Follow Releases to track progress.
The table further down is the v1.0 vision. For what works today, see the Roadmap — shipped items are checked.
Type any command directly in the notch. gh-notch parses it locally first (math, word/character count, text transforms, date — all on-device), then dispatches anything else to an AI agent of your choice (Ollama, OpenAI, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — your endpoint, your key, your data). A 🔒/☁️ badge shows whether a result was resolved on-device or sent to your model. Nothing leaves your Mac unless you configure an endpoint.
Clean battery indicator with charge level, charging state, and time-remaining estimate.
Album art, playback controls, and a live audio visualizer — rendered in the notch without covering any screen real estate.
Your next event, always visible in the collapsed bar; expand for today's agenda. Privacy-first (EventKit access is requested lazily, only when you open the panel) and your calendar data never leaves your Mac. Reminders + a mini-calendar are still planned.
Drag files into the expanded panel to hold them; they're staged into a managed folder so they survive relaunch. Drag them back out to Finder or any app, or share/AirDrop straight from a shelf chip. Per-item remove and clear-all, with a max-N cap.
Replaces the default macOS brightness/volume overlay with a sleek notch-native HUD.
Reflects the v1.0 vision. See the Roadmap for current status.
| Feature | gh-notch | Boring Notch | NotchNook |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free | Paid |
| AI Command Bar | Yes | No | No |
| Open Source | MIT | GPL | Closed |
| Media Controls | Planned | Yes | Yes |
| Calendar | Yes | No | Yes |
| File Shelf | Yes | No | Yes |
| Battery HUD | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom HUD | Planned | No | No |
| Local AI (Ollama) | Yes | N/A | N/A |
- macOS 14 Sonoma or later
- Apple Silicon or Intel Mac (notch optional — degrades to a top-center bar without one)
- Xcode 16+ and XcodeGen (to build from source)
Grab the latest .dmg from the Releases page. Each tagged version is built automatically by CI.
Early builds are unsigned. Until the project is code-signed and notarized (tracked in RELEASING.md), macOS Gatekeeper will warn on first launch. To open an unsigned build: right-click the app → Open → Open. You only do this once.
A Homebrew cask ships in Casks/gh-notch.rb. Once the first release is published it can be installed via a tap:
brew tap aymandakirgh/tap https://github.com/aymandakirgh/homebrewtap
brew install --cask gh-notch(Until a signed build is available in the official homebrew-cask, the tap is the supported path.)
git clone https://github.com/aymandakirgh/ghnotch.git
cd ghnotch
brew install xcodegen # the .xcodeproj is generated, not committed
xcodegen generate
open gh-notch.xcodeproj # Xcode 16+Set your signing team in Signing & Capabilities, then ⌘R. See DEVELOPMENT.md for the full guide.
Tracked release-by-release. ✅ = shipped, ⬜ = planned.
- ✅ Notch panel foundation —
NSPanelabove the menu bar, runtime notch geometry, expand/collapse - ✅ AI Command Bar — local commands (math, counts, transforms, date)
- ✅ AI Command Bar — remote dispatch (OpenAI / Ollama / any OpenAI-compatible endpoint)
- ✅ Settings window — endpoint config, API key stored in Keychain
- ✅ Battery HUD — level, charging state, time estimate
- ✅ CI (build + test + lint) and a signed-release pipeline
- ✅ Calendar — next event in the collapsed bar + today's agenda when expanded
- ⬜ Media controls + now-playing
- ⬜ Album-art audio visualizer
- ⬜ Reminders + mini-calendar
- ✅ File Shelf — drag-in, drag-out, AirDrop, persistence across relaunch
- ✅ State-machine core (collapsed / peek / activity / HUD / expanded) with priority + auto-dismiss rules
- ✅ Spring-driven island morph in a fixed panel (no window resizing), Reduce Motion respected
- ✅ Swipe gestures — two-finger swipe down opens, up closes (trackpad + Magic Mouse)
- ✅ Multi-display: built-in-only or all displays, pill on notchless screens, clamshell fallback
- ✅ Settings tabs: launch at login, hover delay, notch-width override, per-feature toggles
- ✅ Content-driven expanded height (scrolls past the cap), event-driven battery/calendar monitors
The road to v1.0 — free Alcove-parity (full plan)
- ⬜ v0.5 Now Playing + audio visualizer
- ⬜ v0.6 Customizable HUDs (volume / brightness / backlight / caps lock) + camera-mic privacy dots
- ⬜ v0.7 Live activity engine (timers, downloads, device connect, calendar countdown)
- ⬜ v0.8 Notification mirroring in the notch
- ⬜ v0.9 Lock-screen widgets (experimental) + delight pass
- ⬜ v1.0 Performance gate, streaming AI + history, launch
gh-notch is and will remain free and open source under the MIT license. No paid tiers, no ads, no telemetry. Your AI queries go only to the endpoint you configure; everything the local handlers resolve never leaves your Mac. Contributions welcome.
Pull requests are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md first. For architecture context, see docs/ARCHITECTURE.md; to cut a release, see RELEASING.md.
MIT — free to use, modify, and distribute.
Questions or want to collaborate? → growthackers.io