macOS Dynamic Island and notch for Windows
Download · Usage · Installation · Privacy · Website
V-Notch adds media controls, synced lyrics, system stats, privacy indicators, and a Spotlight launcher to the top of your screen. Use it as a compact pill or expand it into a floating Dynamic Island. It works with MyDockFinder.
Free and open source forever.
V-Notch is an independent project.
If you use it regularly, you can support development via PayPal.
 Dynamic Island mode A floating pill with spring animations and Liquid Glass refraction. |
 Media controls Control playback and volume, view album art, and seek through the current track. |
 Spotify & synced lyrics Follow synced lyrics over changing color gradients or Canvas backgrounds. |
 Volume & audio mixer Adjust each app’s volume or use the master slider, styled to match the album art. |
 File shelf Drop files onto the notch, then drag them into another app when you need them. |
 Gestures Swipe left or right to change tracks. Scroll to switch views, or swipe down to open the shelf. |
 Clipboard notification See a notification and preview when you copy text or images. |
|
 Liquid Glass optics Glass rendered with DirectX 11, including chromatic aberration and refraction at the edges. |
 Stay behind windows Keep the notch on the desktop layer, below maximized apps. |
 Spotlight search Press Alt+Space to find apps and files or calculate an expression. |
 Settings Adjust the notch’s appearance and behavior in Settings. |
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Hover | Expand the notch |
| Click | Toggle pill / expanded view |
| Middle click | Play / pause media |
| Scroll down | Switch to file shelf |
| Scroll up | Switch back to media controls |
| Swipe left / right | Previous / next track |
| Swipe down | Open file shelf |
Alt + Space |
Open or close Spotlight |
Up / Down in Spotlight |
Move through results |
Enter |
Launch selected item |
Esc |
Close Spotlight |
File shelf actions
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Drag onto notch | Stage files |
| Lasso drag | Select multiple staged files |
Ctrl + Click |
Toggle selection |
| Drag out | Move to any target |
Delete |
Remove selected files |
Use Windows Snipping Tool (Win + Shift + S), Print Screen, Alt + Print Screen, or any tool that puts a bitmap or PNG on the clipboard. The compact pill briefly shows the image thumbnail and a waiting ring. Hover over it to open a preview, then drag the image into another app, choose Keep on shelf, or dismiss it.
Every preview uses a 304-DIP-wide layout with a 136-DIP-high image area. Images keep their aspect ratio and are not cropped. Moving away collapses the preview back to the pill. The eight-second timeout pauses while you hover, focus the preview, or drag an image. Dismissing the preview restores the pill’s usual content. If the notch is expanded or busy, new captures wait briefly.
You can turn the tray off in Settings. It follows the notch’s visibility and stays hidden on the desktop layer. Copied images also appear in the tray because Windows does not reliably distinguish them from screenshots.
For tools that save directly to disk, such as Win + Print Screen and Game Bar, V-Notch watches Pictures/Screenshots, Videos/Captures, their Windows redirected locations, and Documents/ShareX/Screenshots. Add other capture folders in Settings, one per line. The tray imports new PNG, JPEG, BMP, and TIFF files from these folders and their subfolders. It does not scan existing files.
Clipboard and disk images with identical pixels count as one capture if they arrive within five seconds. Images over 64 million pixels and disk files over 100 MB are skipped. A tool must provide a clipboard image or a supported file in a watched folder for the tray to detect it.
Previews stay in memory until you keep or drag them. Kept PNGs are saved in %LOCALAPPDATA%\V-Notch\Screenshots\Saved. Drag exports go into the adjacent Temporary directory; exports older than 24 hours are cleaned up when the app next starts. Removing an item from the shelf leaves its saved PNG on disk.
V-Notch runs on 64-bit Windows 10 build 19041 or later, or Windows 11. It requires .NET 8 Desktop Runtime or .NET 10 Desktop Runtime. The self-contained installer includes the runtime. A dedicated GPU is recommended for Liquid Glass at 60-120 FPS.
- Download
V-Notch-Setup.exefrom Releases. UseV-Notch-Setup-SelfContained.exeto skip the .NET install. - Run the installer.
- Launch V-Notch from the Start Menu or desktop shortcut.
- Optionally enable "Start with Windows" in Settings.
Build with GitHub Actions
Open the Actions tab, select Release Installer, and click Run workflow. Choose framework-dependent (smaller, requires .NET runtime) or self-contained (standalone). Download the installer from Artifacts when the build finishes, or from the automated nightly release tag.
V-Notch does not collect telemetry or analytics, or track you. It makes network requests to the following services:
| Service | Purpose |
|---|---|
| GitHub Releases API | Update checks |
| LRCLIB / lrc mux | Synced lyrics |
| YouTube / SoundCloud | Public thumbnails and captions |
| Spotify Web Services | Optional Canvas backgrounds; credentials encrypted with Windows DPAPI |
| Open-Meteo / ipwho.is | Optional weather |
All settings and caches are stored locally at %APPDATA%\V-Notch\.
Privacy dots use capture reports from Windows and recording signals from Bandicam, OBS Studio, and FFmpeg. See recording detection coverage and limitations.
Privacy Policy · Tiếng Việt · Terms of Service · Tiếng Việt
Thank you to everyone who has supported V-Notch since the early releases. Your feedback and GitHub stars help keep the project going.
V-Notch uses the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.