CARROT Weather alternative: just the forecast
CARROT is $14.99 with in-app purchases on top, and it is very good. Notchy answers the smaller question — what is it doing outside, and what is coming — on the notch, free.
| CARROT Weather | Notchy | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $14.99 plus in-app purchases | Free — optional donations |
| Current conditions | Yes | Yes |
| Detailed forecast & radar | Yes | The hours ahead, glanceable |
| Severe weather alerts | Yes | No |
| Where it lives | Menu bar and global hotkey | The notch — no menu bar space |
| Anything beyond weather | No | 50+ tools in the same island |
From CARROT Weather’s own site and Mac App Store listing, checked against Notchy’s shipping build.
Nothing here replaces CARROT
It won an Apple Editor's Choice award for good reason: the data is excellent, the customisation is deep, and the personality is the point. If that is what you want, no free notch strip is going to substitute for it.
But most weather checks are trivial
Temperature, and whether it will rain before you leave. Weather on the notch answers that in the time it takes to look up, without opening an app or paying for a data tier.
In-app purchases on a paid app
$14.99 gets you in, and the premium data tiers cost more again. That is a normal model and CARROT is upfront about it — just worth knowing the sticker price is not the final one.
One app, many small jobs
Weather is one of dozens of two-second questions — next meeting, device battery, what is playing. Notchy answers all of them in one place.
Everything Notchy does, for free
- Fluid Dynamic Island animations on the Mac notch
- Command palette (⌃⌥K) — every action one keystroke away
- Knock — double-tap a modifier key to open the notch
- AI usage tracker (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot)
- Detach any tab into a menu-bar popover
- Now Playing music controls (Apple Music & Spotify)
- Time-synced karaoke lyrics under the notch
- Mac clipboard history shelf (password-manager safe)
- Searchable clipboard — filter by text, file name, or OCR'd words
- On-device OCR — copy a screenshot, get its text (Apple Vision)
- Window snapping — drag a window to the notch to tile it
- App Launcher — pin apps to the notch, open with one tap
- Text snippets — TextExpander-style pastes from the ⌘K palette
- One-tap screen capture to clipboard + shelf
- Color eyedropper — sample any pixel, hex auto-copied
- System-wide mic mute for every meeting app at once
- Keystroke HUD for demos & screencasts (secure-input safe)
- Keyboard cleaning lock with countdown island (⌘⎋ unlocks)
- Menu-bar icon hiding — Bartender-style separator & chevron
- Live CPU / memory / network stats flyout
- Open GitHub PR count in the notch (Keychain-stored token)
- iPhone-style call island — Answer/Decline FaceTime on the notch
- Notch Terminal — real VT100/xterm shell in a PTY, its own tab
- Privacy Indicator — pill when any app's camera or mic goes live
- Caps Lock HUD — brief island on every toggle
- Full Charge island with adjustable threshold + low-battery sound
- Alt HUD styles — edge-pinned bar or circular gauge off the notch
- Audio-reactive Now Playing visualizer (real FFT of system audio)
- Custom closed-notch idle animation — drop in your own Lottie JSON
- Drag-and-drop file drop shelf — persists across relaunches
- Zip & unzip files right from the shelf
- Image converter (HEIC, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF) + video → GIF
- Run Apple Shortcuts with one tap
- Screenshots auto-staged on the shelf, ready to drag
- Download finished alerts with Reveal in Finder
- USB drive mount island with one-tap Eject
- Apple Reminders quick capture & due list
- macOS Pomodoro notch timer & stopwatch — streaks + 7-day chart
- Resizable expanded panel (width & height, live preview)
- System HUDs (volume, brightness, battery)
- Audio output switcher (speakers, AirPods, monitor)
- AirPods connection manager & battery
- Magic Mouse, Keyboard & Trackpad battery + low-battery alerts
- Quick notes & Calendar widgets
- Camera Mirror (check your appearance)
- Keep Awake (caffeine toggle)
- Teleprompter (Cuely) for Zoom calls
- Focus-aware alerts & native haptic feedback
- Lock screen widgets & hide-the-notch mode
- 133 languages, fully localized
- Native SwiftUI, tuned for Apple Silicon
Notchy vs CARROT Weather — FAQ
How much is CARROT Weather on Mac?
$14.99 on the Mac App Store, with in-app purchases on top for the premium data tiers. Notchy shows current conditions and the hours ahead free, as part of a wider notch toolkit.
Is CARROT Weather worth it?
If you enjoy it, genuinely yes — it is an Apple Editor's Choice winner with excellent data, deep customisation and a comedy voice that people either love or switch off. Nothing here replaces the personality. Notchy is the plain, free, glanceable option.
What does Notchy show?
Current conditions and the hours ahead, on the notch, so you can see whether to take a coat without opening anything. No radar, no severe weather alerting, no snark.
Does CARROT take a menu bar slot?
It offers menu bar access and a global hotkey. Notchy uses the notch, which costs no menu bar space — worth something on a 14-inch MacBook where the cutout already splits the bar.
Do I need a dedicated weather app?
If you follow forecasts closely, plan around rain, or want radar and alerts, yes. If you glance at the temperature a few times a day, that is a small job to buy a whole app for — especially one with in-app purchases layered on.
Can I run both?
Yes, they do not conflict. CARROT for the detail and the jokes, Notchy for the glance.
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