The icons the notch ate, back in reach
A busy menu bar on a notched MacBook pushes extras under the camera cutout, where macOS draws them and no click can land. Notchy lists every one inside the notch and presses the real item for you.
It presses the real icon
Clicking a row opens that app's own menu, from that app. No re-implementation of someone else's menu, no guessing what their items do.
Works while the panel is open
The panel covers the strip beside the cutout, which is exactly where extras live. Having them inside the panel is the point — you never have to close Notchy to reach something behind it.
Not a poller
The list is rebuilt when the card appears and when apps launch or quit — never on a timer. Sweeping accessibility trees every second is how a menu bar utility quietly costs you several percent of a core.
Or make the row shorter
Hide the extras for free, move the readouts into the notch — system stats, weather, calendar — or black the notch out entirely.
Versus Bartender, Ice and Vanilla
Menu bar managers organise what is there; none of them can click an item the cutout is covering. Full comparisons on the Bartender, Ice and Vanilla pages.
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
Menu bar and the notch — FAQ
Why do my menu bar icons disappear behind the notch?
The notch physically occupies the middle of the menu bar. macOS lays extras out from the right, and once the row is long enough the remainder slides under the cutout — where it is drawn but cannot be clicked. Adding one more menu bar app makes it worse, not better.
How do I click an icon that is under the notch?
Notchy's Menu Bar card lists every extra your Mac has — visible, hidden or eaten by the cutout — and clicking a row presses the real status item. The app's own menu opens, from that app, exactly as it would if you had hit the icon. Nothing is redrawn or faked.
Does macOS have a built-in fix?
Not really. You can quit apps until the row is short enough, or turn on Automatically hide and show the menu bar so items reflow — neither is a way to click the item you wanted.
Does this need Accessibility permission?
Yes. There is no API that vends another app's status item, so the real extras are read through the accessibility menu bar and pressed in place. That permission is what makes clicking the actual icon possible.
Is it constantly scanning my menu bar?
No. Extras change when apps launch, quit or toggle their icon, so the list is rebuilt when the card appears and on app launch or quit. A once-a-second sweep of every app's accessibility tree is exactly the kind of thing that costs idle CPU, and it is avoided deliberately.
Can I just hide the clutter instead?
Yes — Notchy's menu bar hider tucks the extras away for free, and the readouts you were keeping up there (battery, weather, calendar, now playing, system stats) have cards in the notch, so there is less to fit in the first place.