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Warning
Beta. NotchMate is used every day, but it is still being polished: expect bugs, and the UI and settings will change. If something breaks, please open an issue.
Turn the dead space around your MacBook notch into a living companion. Hover the notch and a panel slides out with your music, notes, today's meetings, Jira tasks, call recording, health data and an AI chat — plus a tiny pixel pet that reacts to what you're doing. Free, open source, and your data stays on your Mac.
🌍 Speaks your language: English, Русский, Deutsch, Español, Français, Português (Brasil), 简体中文 and 日本語. NotchMate follows the system language; you can pick another one in Settings → General → Language.
NotchMate has a living pixel face. It dances to your music, gets serious while you focus, reacts to files and charging, and reminds you to drink water. Almost 40 animations — these are real frames from the app:
Hover the notch and the panel slides down. Tabs: Companion, Music, Health, Work, Notes and Shelf.
 Companion: a timeline of meetings and reminders, what needs your attention, ask the companion about your day |
 Music: player with seeking and volume, plus a focus timer and today's note |
 Notes: quick capture, search, pinned notes and a preview with checkboxes |
 Work: the issue in progress with a timer and worklogs, your Jira issues |
 Health: Body Battery, stress, today's chart and breathing |
Illustrations follow the app's real layout; the data in them is made up. |
- Companion — a living face under the notch. Reacts to music, focus, notes, files and charging; reminds you to drink water and stretch. Click to interact, double-click for today's tasks and stats.
- Music — Yandex Music, Spotify, Apple Music and the browser via Now Playing: artwork, seeking, volume, colors from the cover.
- Notes — quick capture into your daily note, search, previews with checkboxes, pinned notes. Obsidian or Apple Notes.
- Calendar & reminders — upcoming meetings and today's to-dos.
- Calls — recording, on-device transcription and meeting minutes.
- Jira — issues in progress, a timer and worklogs.
- Git — the state of the repository you're working in.
- AI chat — Claude Code, Codex, OpenAI with your key, or your own OpenAI-compatible server (e.g. Ollama).
- Agents — see when Claude Code is waiting for you; agents get NotchMate's tools over MCP.
- Health — stress, Body Battery and sleep from Garmin Connect, breathing exercises.
- Shelf for files, clipboard history (no passwords) and a focus timer.
Shortcuts: ⌃⌥N — open, ⌃⌥M — quick note, ⌘1–6 — tabs, Esc — close.
- Download
NotchMate-…-arm64.zipfrom the latest release. - Unzip it and drag NotchMate into Applications.
- On first launch macOS will say it can't verify the developer — the app isn't notarized by Apple yet. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway next to NotchMate. Or run in Terminal:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/NotchMate.app
- Grant the permissions NotchMate asks for — without them only the related feature is off.
After installing a new version macOS may ask for permissions again: releases are signed without a developer certificate.
- macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple Silicon.
- A MacBook with a notch is ideal; on other Macs the panel sits at the top of the screen.
- To build: Xcode or Command Line Tools with Swift 5.10+.
git clone --recursive https://github.com/aleksandr-developer1/notchmate.git
cd notchmate
./build.sh # builds build/NotchMate.app
./build.sh install # and installs it to /Applications, then launches itIf you cloned without --recursive, build.sh fetches the Vendor/mediaremote-adapter submodule itself.
Signing. macOS ties granted permissions (Accessibility, Automation, microphone and others) to the app's signature. build.sh uses the first Apple Development / Developer ID certificate in your keychain; without one it signs ad hoc, and permissions have to be granted again after every rebuild. Pick a certificate explicitly with SIGN_ID="<name or SHA-1>" ./build.sh.
On first launch NotchMate shows which permissions it needs and why. All of them are optional — without one, only the related feature is off:
| Permission | Used for |
|---|---|
| Accessibility | hotkeys, the current window and repository |
| Automation | Notes, browser tabs, the player |
| Microphone & screen recording | recording calls |
| Speech recognition | on-device transcription |
| Calendars, Reminders | today's meetings and to-dos |
- All data stays local:
~/Library/Application Support/NotchMateand macOS preferences. - Jira tokens and AI keys are stored in
~/Library/Application Support/NotchMate/secrets.json, readable only by your user account (mode 600). The system Keychain isn't used so macOS doesn't prompt for access after every rebuild. - Calls are transcribed on your Mac.
- AI requests go only to the provider you pick in the settings.
- Clipboard history skips passwords and content marked as confidential.
NotchMate works as an MCP server for Claude Code and Codex and receives their hooks to show when an agent is waiting for you. Connect everything with one button in Settings → Integrations, or add the MCP server by hand:
claude mcp add --scope user notchmate -- /Applications/NotchMate.app/Contents/MacOS/NotchMate --mcpSources/NotchMate/ source code, one folder per feature (Media, Jira, Calls, AI…)
Resources/ Info.plist, icon, companion animations, Garmin sync script
Vendor/ mediaremote-adapter (git submodule)
docs/images/ README images
MIT. Third-party components and their licenses are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
NotchMate uses the private MediaRemote framework, so it can't ship on the Mac App Store, and a macOS update may break the Music block.
If NotchMate makes your day a little nicer, please ⭐ star the repo — it really helps the project grow.
Bugs and ideas go to issues, questions to discussions. Want to help with code? See CONTRIBUTING.