Gestures
Knock on your MacBook to trigger any action
Notchy turns a knock on the chassis, a tap on the trackpad, or a double-tap of a modifier key into any action you choose.
Three triggers, one pipeline
The chassis accelerometer on Apple Silicon laptops, the Force Touch trackpad, and a bare-modifier double-tap that works on every Mac — including desktops with an external keyboard.
It won't misfire
A modifier used inside a real shortcut is discarded, not triggered. Impact sensitivity has light, medium and firm settings so a knock stays a knock and a closing drawer doesn't.
Assign anything
Open the file shelf or clipboard history, play/pause, skip a track, take a screenshot, toggle caffeine, start a Pomodoro, or lock the screen.
Different in every app
Per-app overrides mean the same knock can pause music in one app and open the clipboard in another — no reconfiguring as you switch.
Control your MacBook with a tap
A knock needs the chassis accelerometer, which only Apple Silicon laptops carry. Tapping doesn't. On any Mac with a Force Touch trackpad, a tap that never becomes a click is enough to fire an action — rest a finger down, and Notchy tells the pressure curve of a deliberate tap apart from a cursor move. Sensitivity is the same light / medium / firm control the knock uses.
On desktops, or with an external keyboard where there is no trackpad at all, the third trigger takes over: double-tap a bare modifier — Control, Option, Command or Shift. Press it inside a real shortcut and nothing happens, so ⌘C stays ⌘C. It is also the automatic fallback whenever a sensor stream refuses to open, which means every Mac Notchy runs on has at least one working tap gesture.
Each trigger routes into the same action list — clipboard history, the command palette, play/pause, screenshot, lock — and each can be overridden per app, so a tap means one thing in your editor and another in your browser.
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
MacBook knock gesture — FAQ
How does knocking on a MacBook work?
Apple Silicon laptops have an accelerometer in the chassis. Notchy watches it for the sharp double impact of a knock and ignores ordinary movement, then runs whichever action you assigned.
What if my Mac doesn’t have that sensor?
There are two other triggers. The Force Touch trackpad detects a tap without a click, and a double-tap of a bare modifier key — Control, Option, Command or Shift — works on every Mac and keyboard, desktop included. The key trigger is also the automatic fallback when a sensor stream won’t open.
Will it fire while I’m typing?
No. A modifier pressed as part of a normal chord contaminates the tap and is ignored, so ⌘C stays ⌘C. Knock sensitivity is adjustable between light, medium and firm if your desk is a drum.
What can a knock actually do?
Open or close the notch, open the file shelf or clipboard history, launch the command palette, mirror the camera, play/pause, skip tracks, mute audio, toggle caffeine, take a screenshot, start a Pomodoro, or lock the screen.
Can different apps do different things?
Yes. Per-app overrides let a knock mean play/pause in your music app and screenshot in your browser, without you changing a setting each time.
Is this the same as the Knock app (tryknock.app)?
Knock is a dedicated tap-control app for the Mac, sold separately from its own Buy page, with an iPhone companion for tapping your desk. Notchy includes chassis-knock, trackpad-tap and modifier double-tap triggers in the free app, alongside the rest of the notch tools — so if the gesture is all you wanted, you don't need a second purchase. Knock goes further on tap sources and per-tap configuration.
Does it need permissions?
The key double-tap uses the Accessibility grant Notchy already holds for its shortcuts. No Input Monitoring, and nothing you type is read.