A powerful, extensible take on the Mac notch — built on the foundation of boring.notch, then pushed far beyond it with native widgets, a pinnable widget library, Bluetooth connection notifications, a built-in caffeine control, and a custom-widget system you can script yourself.
Download · Build from source · Widgets · Custom widgets · Support
Note
InterestingNotch is a heavily extended fork built for people who want the notch to actually do things — glanceable widgets, quick controls, and a way to wire in your own status without waiting for a feature request.
Most people should install the prebuilt app:
- Download the latest DMG
- Open
InterestingNotch.dmg - Drag
InterestingNotch.appintoApplications - Launch the app and grant the permissions for the features you want to use
Prefer to build it yourself? See Getting started.
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
- A Mac with a notch (or a Mac using the notch area on an external display)
- What it is
- Highlights
- Widgets
- Sports widget
- Custom widgets
- Caffeine
- Bluetooth connection notifications
- Widget library
- Getting started
- Contributing
- Support
- Credits
- License
InterestingNotch turns the empty space around the Mac notch into a compact, glanceable surface for the things you check constantly — and the things you build yourself.
It keeps everything the original boring.notch does well — media live activity, gestures, HUD replacement, the shelf, multi-display support — and layers on a redesigned settings experience, a proper widget library with pinning, a family of native widgets, first-party quick controls, and an open custom-widget system that any script can push to.
Everything runs locally. No cloud, no account.
- Native widgets — timer, color picker, clipboard history, calendar, voice recorder, and system monitor.
- Pinnable widget library — browse widgets and pin the ones you want as notch tabs.
- Custom widgets — let your own scripts push sneak peeks to the notch with a single JSON file.
- Bluetooth connection notifications — see when selected paired devices connect or disconnect.
- Built-in Caffeine — keep your Mac awake with timed display-awake or system-awake modes.
- Core notch surfaces — media activity, Shelf, Mirror, gestures, HUD replacement, and multi-display support.
- Redesigned settings — a cleaner, organized settings layout and a dedicated widget library view.
- Local-first — no network required for anything core.
A consistent, Apple-like family of widgets designed for the notch — quiet, glanceable, and interactive. These six widgets are managed from the Widget Library and can be pinned as tabs:
| Widget | What it does |
|---|---|
| Timer / Stopwatch | A scrubbable ruler to set a countdown, live closed-notch glance, haptic detents, and a stopwatch mode. |
| System Monitor | Live CPU, RAM, disk, and network ring gauges that shift color with load. |
| Color Picker | Pick any color on screen, copy HEX/RGB/HSL, and keep a quick recent history. |
| Clipboard History | Recent text, links, and images as scrollable cards — recopy or pin with one click. |
| Calendar | A compact month grid plus an agenda of events and reminders; tap to open in Calendar or Reminders. |
| Voice Recorder | Capture quick voice notes with a live waveform, elapsed time, and instant reveal of the saved file. |
| File Converter | Drag in an image, PDF, or text file and convert it natively — JPG/PNG/HEIC/WebP/TIFF, PDF↔image, and TXT/RTF/HTML/Markdown → PDF. |
Any widget can be pinned from the library to become its own notch tab.
The Sports widget brings a full match-first flow into InterestingNotch: a live notch tab, a team page with upcoming fixtures and recent results, and a settings-side match detail page with timeline and stat comparisons.
- Pinned team priority — starred teams take priority so the notch surfaces the next relevant match first.
- Multi-game paging — swipe or scroll through multiple followed matches directly inside the notch.
- Team drill-in — move from leagues to teams to fixtures without leaving the widget library flow.
- Match detail — open a full summary view with key events, stat bars, venue info, and status.
- Live Formula 1 — constructor, team colour, gap to leader, and laps for each driver, refreshed live.
The most powerful part: you can push your own content to the notch without touching the app.
InterestingNotch watches a folder and turns any JSON file dropped into it into a sneak peek. It's event-driven — the app stays asleep until a file changes — so it costs effectively nothing while idle.
Write a peek from anything — bash, Python, a Shortcut, a cron job:
echo '{"title":"X1C","message":"78%","icon":"printer.fill","side":"split"}' \
> ~/.interestingnotch/peeks/bambu.jsonThe schema (only title is required):
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
title |
Required. The main line. |
message |
Optional secondary line / value. |
icon |
Optional SF Symbol name. |
accent |
Optional hex color. |
side |
left, right, or split — where it sits around the notch. |
duration |
Optional seconds. Omit to keep it until the file is removed. |
Overwrite the same file to update a peek in place (great for live progress), delete it to clear it. Timing is entirely up to your script — the peek appears the moment the file is written.
The Custom Widgets panel shows live status, the folder path, and per-file errors so you can debug your scripts.
Pairs perfectly with tools like Bambuddy Tray — your printer app can push print progress and a "ready!" alert straight to the notch.
A built-in keep-awake, no extra menu-bar app required.
- Toggle from the notch header or a global keyboard shortcut.
- Choose display-awake (screen stays on) or system-awake (Mac stays up, screen can sleep).
- Timed modes (15m / 1h / 2h / until off) with a sneak peek when it ends.
- Always-visible state so it never drains your battery silently.
Built on native macOS power assertions — clean, revocable, no shell-outs.
InterestingNotch can watch selected paired Bluetooth devices and show a notch activity when they connect or disconnect. This is connection-status monitoring, not a battery-level reader.
When a paired accessory connects or disconnects, InterestingNotch surfaces the change in the notch so it is easy to spot at a glance:
Choose which devices can trigger notifications in Settings → Bluetooth Devices. InterestingNotch listens for connection changes instead of continuously polling in the background.
A dedicated library for managing what's in your notch. Open the Widgets page, review your pinned widgets at the top, and pin or unpin tabs without digging through a long settings list:
- Widgets page for every available widget with a description.
- Pinned Widgets area at the top with direct drill-in to each widget's own settings page.
- Pin / Unpin to add or remove a widget as a notch tab.
- Core surfaces (Mirror, Shelf, and Media) remain available alongside the widget family.
- Custom Widgets (beta) to enable and monitor script-driven peeks.
The settings experience has been reorganized around this library, so adding and arranging notch content is fast and obvious.
If you want the ready-made app, use the DMG from the latest release.
If you want to build it yourself:
git clone https://github.com/nodescraper/interestingnotch.git
cd interestingnotch
open InterestingNotch.xcodeprojBuild and run in Xcode. On first launch, grant the permissions the features you use require.
Contributions, bug reports, and feature ideas are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request, and see SECURITY.md for how to report a security issue.
- Found a bug? Open an issue with your macOS version and steps to reproduce.
- Have an idea? Start a discussion or issue before large changes so we can align on direction.
- Building a custom widget? Share it — the custom-widget system is designed for exactly this.
InterestingNotch is free and open source, built and maintained in my spare time. If it earns a place in your notch, you can help keep it caffeinated:
Support is entirely optional and never gates any feature — the app stays fully free either way. Starring the repo helps too, and costs nothing. ⭐
Built on the foundation of boring.notch by The Bored Team. InterestingNotch is a public fork that preserves upstream attribution and extends it with its own widget family, widget library, custom-widget system, Caffeine control, Bluetooth connection notifications, and a redesigned settings layout.
Third-party components and their licenses are listed in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.
InterestingNotch is licensed under the upstream GNU GPL v3.0 license. See LICENSE for the full text.