Forecast Bar alternative: weather without the slot
Forecast Bar is a good $5.99 weather app that wants a permanent place in your menu bar. Notchy puts conditions and the hours ahead on the notch instead — free, and using space macOS was wasting.
| Forecast Bar | Notchy | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $5.99 on the Mac App Store | Free — optional donations |
| Current conditions | Yes | Yes |
| Hourly and daily forecast | Yes — detailed | The hours ahead, glanceable |
| Radar maps | Yes | No |
| Where it lives | Menu bar slot | The notch — no menu bar space |
| Anything beyond weather | No | 50+ tools in the same island |
From Forecast Bar’s own Mac App Store listing, checked against Notchy’s shipping build.
Forecast Bar is the better weather app
Radar, detailed hourly breakdowns, severe weather alerts — a dedicated app does weather better than a strip on a notch, and pretending otherwise would be silly. The question is whether you need that depth daily.
Menu bar space is finite
On a 14-inch MacBook the notch already cuts the bar in half, and icons start falling off the left edge. Weather on the notch costs nothing you were using — or hide the icons you have.
How often do you actually check?
Most people glance at the temperature and whether it will rain. That is a two-second question, and paying $5.99 plus a menu bar slot to answer it is a lot when it comes free with an app you already run.
And the rest of the day
Your next meeting, what is playing, clipboard history and timers, in the same 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 Forecast Bar — FAQ
Is Forecast Bar free?
No — $5.99 on the Mac App Store. It is the cheaper of the two well-known Mac weather apps, with Carrot Weather at $14.99. Notchy shows conditions and the hours ahead free, as one tool among 50+.
Is Forecast Bar better than Notchy for weather?
For weather specifically, yes — it is a dedicated app with radar, detailed hourly and daily breakdowns and severe weather alerts. Notchy gives you the glanceable version: current conditions and what is coming, on the notch. If you want radar maps, buy Forecast Bar.
Does Notchy show weather in the menu bar?
It shows it on the notch rather than the menu bar, which means it costs no horizontal space — relevant on a 14-inch MacBook where the notch already splits the bar and icons get pushed off the edge.
Do I need another app just for weather?
That is the real question. A weather app is a permanent menu bar slot for something you glance at a few times a day. If you are already running Notchy for media, clipboard and timers, the weather comes along with it.
What macOS does each need?
Forecast Bar runs on recent macOS releases from the App Store. Notchy needs macOS 13 Ventura or later, on Intel or Apple Silicon.
Can I run both?
Yes, they do not conflict at all. Plenty of people would want Forecast Bar's radar and Notchy's glanceable strip at the same time.
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