CueNotch alternative: a prompter without the meter
CueNotch is the most capable notch teleprompter going — and its free tier stops at three activations a day and 100-word scripts. Notchy scrolls your script under the notch with no caps at all, as part of a whole toolkit.
| CueNotch | Notchy | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free tier · $7.99/week or $29.99 lifetime | Free — optional donations |
| Free tier limits | 3 activations/day, 100-word scripts | None |
| macOS | 14 Sonoma or later | 13 Ventura or later |
| Macs with no notch | Yes — top-centre overlay | Yes — floating island |
| Voice-synced scrolling | Yes | No |
| Hidden from screen shares | Yes — Ghost Mode | No |
| Anything beyond teleprompting | No | 50+ tools in the same island |
From CueNotch’s own website and pricing page, checked against Notchy’s shipping build.
CueNotch is the better teleprompter
Said plainly, because it is true. Voice-synced scrolling and a mode that hides the prompter from screen recordings are real features Notchy does not have. If you shoot scripted video for a living, that is what you are paying for and it is worth it.
Most people are not shooting scripted video
For notes near the lens on a call a few times a month, a weekly subscription is a strange thing to carry. Notchy's teleprompter is free, uncapped, and already installed if you use the notch for anything else.
Watch the weekly plan
$7.99 a week is $415 a year if you forget to cancel, against a $29.99 lifetime licence sitting right beside it. If you do buy CueNotch, buy the lifetime one.
One app, or two
Both apps want the notch. Running them together means two things competing for the same strip of screen, so pick one — or keep Notchy for clipboard, media and timers and quit it when you record.
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 CueNotch — FAQ
Is CueNotch free?
There is a free tier, but it is tightly capped: three activations a day and scripts up to 100 words. Anything real means Pro, at $7.99 a week or $29.99 for a lifetime licence. Notchy's teleprompter is free with no activation limit and no word cap.
How much is CueNotch Pro?
$7.99 weekly on the auto-renewing plan, or $29.99 once for lifetime, after a non-renewing 3-day Pro trial. The weekly plan adds up fast — a little over three months of it costs more than the lifetime licence.
What does CueNotch do that Notchy doesn’t?
Voice-synced scrolling that follows your speech and pauses when you pause, Ghost Mode to hide the prompter from screen shares and recordings, AI script polishing, rehearsal coaching with feedback, live captions and a script library. That is a genuinely deeper teleprompter than Notchy ships, and worth saying plainly.
What does Notchy do that CueNotch doesn’t?
Everything that isn't teleprompting. Notchy's prompter sits inside a full notch toolkit — media controls, clipboard history, a file drop shelf, timers, system stats, device battery, OCR, window snapping and AI usage tracking — so you aren't running a single-purpose app for one task a week.
What macOS do they need?
CueNotch requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Notchy runs from macOS 13 Ventura onwards. Both work on Apple Silicon and Intel, and both work on Macs without a notch — CueNotch via a top-centre overlay, Notchy via a floating island.
Which should I pick?
If you record scripted video often enough that voice-synced scrolling and hiding from screen shares matter, CueNotch earns its $29.99. If you occasionally need notes near the lens on a call, Notchy does that free and gives you fifty other things the rest of the week.
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