Your home, one click from the notch

Kill the lights without leaving the document you are in. Notchy builds a Home tab from the shortcuts you already have — scenes on one side, accessories on the other — and runs them from the notch, then gets out of the way.

Download free
♥Buy me a coffee

Scenes and accessories, kept apart

A scene sets several things at once; an accessory is one switch. Mixing them in a single grid makes both harder to hit, so the tab splits them — Scenes to run, Accessories to toggle.

It fills itself in

Notchy reads your Shortcuts library and suggests the home ones by name — lights, thermostat, plugs, blinds, locks, rooms. Nothing to configure before the tab is useful, and nothing hidden: you can pin or drop any tile.

Built on Shortcuts, not a private API

Anything a Shortcut can do, the tile can do — HomeKit, Matter bridges, a webhook to a local hub. The same engine drives running any Shortcut from the notch.

Reachable however you like

Open the tab from the notch, from a global hotkey, from the command palette — or by knocking on the chassis.

At a glance

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

HomeKit on Mac — FAQ

How do I control HomeKit from my Mac?

Apple's Home app works, but it means leaving what you are doing, finding a window and hunting for a tile. Notchy puts a Home tab in the notch: scenes on one side, accessories on the other, one click each, and the panel closes itself afterwards.

Does Notchy talk to HomeKit directly?

No, and that is worth being clear about. The Home tab is built from your Apple Shortcuts library — Notchy finds the shortcuts that control your home and runs them. That means it works with anything a Shortcut can drive, HomeKit included, without asking for access to your home data itself.

How does it know which shortcuts are home controls?

By name. Shortcuts with words like light, lamp, thermostat, plug, blinds, lock or a room name are surfaced as accessories; ones named like scenes — Movie Night, Good Morning, Leaving Home — are grouped separately, because you run a scene and you toggle an accessory. Anything it guesses wrong you can pin or unpin yourself.

Can I pin the ones I actually use?

Yes. Pinning fixes a tile in place regardless of what the matching rules suggest, so the four controls you touch every evening stay where your cursor already goes.

Do I need a HomeKit hub?

Whatever your Shortcuts already need. Notchy adds no requirement of its own — if the shortcut runs from the Shortcuts app on that Mac, it runs from the notch.

Is it free?

Yes. Notchy is free with no trial, licence key or subscription, funded by optional donations.