Brown Noise and Rain, Next to Your Timer
A browser tab of brown noise is one accidental ⌘W from silence. Notchy's Focus Sounds play from the notch instead — rain, brown noise, wind or waves — right beside the Pomodoro timer they're meant to go with.
Four sounds, generated live
Rain, brown noise, wind and waves are synthesised on your Mac in real time, not looped from a file — no seam to notice, nothing to download, and they work offline.
From the Timer tab or Home
Press Play next to a sound in the Timer tab or on its Home card, and set the volume with a slider. Playback only starts when you press Play.
Stops with your Pomodoro
Turn on Stop Sounds When Focus Ends and the sound ends when the session finishes or is stopped. Pausing focus keeps it playing.
Never out of the wrong speaker
Sound ramps in gently and stops when the Mac sleeps or the output device changes — unplug your headphones and it goes quiet instead of filling the room.
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
- Camera Guard — alert (or block) when any app opens your camera
- 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
- 134 languages, fully localized
- Native SwiftUI, tuned for Apple Silicon
Focus Sounds for Mac — FAQ
How do I play brown noise on a Mac for free?
Install Notchy, open Settings → Timer and switch on Focus Sounds, then press Play next to Brown Noise in the Timer tab or on the Home card.
Does macOS have built-in background sounds?
Yes — Accessibility → Audio → Background Sounds, buried in System Settings. Notchy puts its sounds next to your focus timer, one click from the notch, and can stop them when the session ends.
Can I mix sounds together?
No — one sound at a time. For layered soundscapes, Noizio and Dark Noise are the specialists.
Is there white noise?
Notchy has brown noise — deeper and softer than white noise — plus rain, wind and waves.
Does it use much CPU or battery?
No. The generator is a few arithmetic operations per audio sample on the system audio thread, with nothing allocated or read from disk while it plays.
When did Focus Sounds arrive?
In Notchy 1.0.195. Like every new option, it starts off.