Jettison alternative: eject from the notch, free
Jettison exists to unmount your drives before the Mac sleeps. Notchy does the other half — one-click ejects from the notch, with a clear signal when it is safe to unplug — free, and without another menu bar icon.
| Jettison | Notchy | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $6.95 after a 15-day trial | Free — optional donations |
| Eject on sleep, remount on wake | Yes — its main purpose | No |
| One-click manual eject | Yes | Yes — from the notch |
| macOS | 10.13 High Sierra or later | 13 Ventura or later |
| Extra menu bar icon | Yes | No — it lives in the notch |
| Anything beyond disks | No | 50+ tools in the same island |
From St. Clair Software’s own site, checked against Notchy’s shipping build.
These are not the same app
Worth being straight about it. Jettison automates ejection around sleep and wake, and Notchy does not. If “disk not ejected properly” is the thing ruining your day, Jettison is the answer and this page is not trying to talk you out of it.
What Notchy actually fixes
The other annoyance: finding the drive, right-clicking, and then wondering whether it really finished. Ejecting from the notch is one click and tells you plainly when the cable is safe to pull.
One less menu bar icon
A single-purpose utility costs a permanent slot in a menu bar that is probably already full. Notchy puts the same control in the notch, next to download progress and everything else.
On older Macs, Jettison wins
Jettison supports macOS 10.13 High Sierra onward — years further back than Notchy's macOS 13 Ventura floor. If your Mac is that old, there is no contest.
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 Jettison — FAQ
Is Jettison free?
No — $6.95 after a 15-day trial, from St. Clair Software. Notchy is free, but the two are not doing quite the same job, so price is not the whole story here.
Does Notchy eject disks automatically when the Mac sleeps?
No, and this is the honest difference. Jettison's whole reason to exist is unmounting external drives before sleep and remounting them on wake, so you stop seeing 'disk not ejected properly'. Notchy gives you one-click eject from the notch — it does not automate around sleep.
So which one should I use?
If you close a MacBook lid with drives attached and keep getting ejection warnings, buy Jettison. That is exactly what it fixes and $6.95 is fair. If you just want to unmount a drive without hunting for it in Finder or adding another menu bar icon, Notchy does that free.
How does ejecting from the notch work?
Connected volumes appear in the notch, and one click unmounts a drive and tells you plainly when it is safe to pull the cable — so you are not guessing during the few seconds that actually matter.
What macOS do they need?
Jettison goes back to macOS 10.13 High Sierra, much further than Notchy's macOS 13 Ventura. On an older Mac, Jettison is the one that runs.
Can I run both?
Yes. They do not fight — Jettison handles sleep and wake, Notchy handles manual ejects and everything else in the notch. If you already own Jettison there is no reason to drop it.
Compare Notchy vs 146 Mac Apps
See how Notchy replaces dozens of single-purpose paid Mac utilities for free.