Utility Toolkit
Lock Your Keyboard — Clean Without Chaos
Crumbs happen. Wiping your keyboard shouldn't type nonsense into Slack. Notchy's cleaning lock makes every key inert until you're done — free, with a countdown island so you always know the state.
Everything swallowed
A consuming event tap eats key downs, key ups, modifiers, and media keys system-wide. Scrub the whole board — nothing reaches the focused app.
State you can see
A pinned countdown island sits on the notch the entire time keys are dead — no guessing whether the lock is still on, no lost utility window behind your browser.
Impossible to trigger by accident
⌘⎋ unlocks — the one combo a cleaning wipe won't produce. Or let the countdown expire and the keyboard returns on its own.
One less single-purpose app
KeyboardCleanTool does one thing; Notchy does this and 40+ more — keystroke HUD, clipboard history, window snapping — all free.
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
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- 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
Keyboard Cleaning Lock — FAQ
How do I lock my Mac keyboard to clean it?
Turn on Notchy’s cleaning lock and every keypress — letters, modifiers, media keys — is swallowed system-wide. Wipe away; nothing reaches your apps. A pinned countdown island in the notch shows the lock is active the whole time.
How do I unlock the keyboard?
Press ⌘⎋ (Command-Escape) — deliberately chosen because no cleaning wipe produces that combo — or just let the countdown run out. Either way your keyboard is instantly back.
Is this a KeyboardCleanTool alternative?
Yes — the same job, free, and with visible state: KeyboardCleanTool is a tiny window you can lose behind other apps, while Notchy pins a countdown island to the notch so you always know keys are dead.
Does the mouse still work while locked?
Yes. Only keyboard events are swallowed — your trackpad and mouse work normally, so you’re never locked out of your own Mac.