Liquid Glass in the notch
macOS 26 Tahoe brought a real glass material to the system. Notchy renders the notch panel, its cards and the lock-screen widgets in that same material — six looks, from a smoked pane to near-clear crystal — and keeps its own tuned glass on every Mac that came before.
The system material, not an imitation
The panel uses the same glass macOS 26 uses for its own surfaces, so it refracts the wallpaper the way the rest of the OS does. A hand-rolled blur never quite matches that — the edges give it away.
Six looks, named for what they are
Smoke, Onyx, Graphite, Frost, Mist and Crystal, ordered by how much desktop shows through. Pick the one that suits your wallpaper — a busy photo wants Smoke, a plain gradient can take Crystal.
Ventura and Sonoma still look right
Below macOS 26 there is no glass to borrow, so Notchy draws its own — sheen, rim and depth built specifically for those releases rather than a bare blur. Notchy runs back to macOS 13 Ventura, Intel included.
Everything it touches
The expanded panel, the Home cards, the buttons, and the lock-screen widgets you see before you log in. The closed pill stays solid black so it still reads as the notch — see notch customization for the shape controls.
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
Liquid Glass on Mac — FAQ
What is Liquid Glass on macOS?
Liquid Glass is the translucent material Apple introduced with macOS 26 Tahoe — a layer that refracts and dims whatever is behind it rather than simply blurring it. Notchy renders the notch panel, its cards and the lock-screen widgets in that same system material, so they look like part of the OS instead of a window painted on top of it.
Do I need macOS 26 Tahoe?
For the system material, yes — it does not exist below macOS 26. Notchy checks for it at runtime, and on macOS 13 Ventura through 15 Sequoia it falls back to its own hand-tuned glass with sheen, rim light and depth. That fallback is deliberate: the bare system blur on older releases looks worse than the treatment built for them.
How many looks are there?
Six, chosen by eye and named for what they look like: Smoke, Onyx, Graphite, Frost, Mist and Crystal — ordered by how much of your desktop they let through. Apple exposes twenty variants, but most are near-duplicates or unusable, and six distinct choices is a better control than twenty numbered ones.
Where does the material apply?
The expanded panel, the cards inside it, the buttons and the lock-screen widgets. The closed pill stays opaque black so it disappears into a real notch.
Does a glass material cost performance?
It is the system's own material, drawn by the compositor, so it is far cheaper than stacking custom blurs. Notchy also stops animating anything behind a closed notch, so a panel you opened and closed leaves nothing running.
Can I turn it off?
Yes. The look is a setting, and the darker variants (Onyx, Graphite) read as near-solid if you would rather not see the desktop through the panel at all.