System HUDs
Keyboard backlight, one reach away
Apple moved keyboard brightness into a Control Center sub-panel. Notchy puts it back where you can hit it — a compact island on the notch, free.
The same client Control Center uses
CoreBrightness, not a workaround — so the level you set behaves and persists exactly as macOS intends.
An island, not an overlay
The same compact treatment as volume and screen brightness — never a translucent square parked over your work.
For the layouts that lost the keys
If your function row has no keyboard-brightness keys, this is the fastest route back to the control — including all the way off.
One app for every level
Keyboard backlight, screen brightness, volume and external monitor brightness over DDC all live 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
Keyboard backlight — FAQ
How do I control the keyboard backlight without the F5/F6 keys?
Newer MacBook layouts dropped the dedicated keyboard-brightness keys, leaving Control Center as the only built-in route. Notchy puts a slider on the notch instead — raise, lower or switch it off without opening anything.
Does it use a private API?
No. It goes through the same CoreBrightness client Control Center itself uses, so the behaviour matches what macOS does natively — including how the level persists.
Why not just use Control Center?
You can. The difference is distance: Control Center is a click into a panel, then a click into a sub-panel, then a drag. The notch island is already at the top of your screen with volume and brightness next to it.
Can I turn the backlight fully off?
Yes — all the way to zero, which is what you usually want in a bright room or when you're squeezing out battery on a long flight.