notchmannotchman vs The Boring Notch.
Side by side.
The Boring Notch (boring.notch) is the best-known notch app: free, GPL-licensed, more than ten thousand GitHub stars, and built around turning the notch into a Dynamic Island. Music with a visualiser, a shelf for files, replacements for the volume and brightness HUDs, battery and Bluetooth activities. notchman has music and the shelf too, but uses the notch mainly as a place to keep small tools.
Facts about The Boring Notch are from its own site, read on 4 October 2026. If something is out of date, email hello@notchman.com.
| notchman | The Boring Notch | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $4.99, one-time | Free, open source (GPL-3.0) |
| Focus | Twenty-four daily tools in a tabbed panel | Dynamic Island: music, shelf, HUDs, live activities |
| Now playing | With karaoke lyrics, album glow and hover controls | With a visualiser |
| Shelf and AirDrop | ✓ | ✓ |
| Camera mirror | ✓ | ✓ |
| Calendar and Reminders | Both, with a Join button on calls | ✓ |
| Dictation and rewriting in any app | ⌥⌘K and ⌥⌘L, on your Mac | — |
| Clipboard, notes, timers | ✓ | — |
| Claude and Codex usage limits | ✓ | — |
| Teleprompter | ✓ | — |
| Works on Macs without a notch | ✓ | Not stated |
| Screen time and time log | ✓ | — |
| Hydration, calories, breathing, habits | ✓ | — |
| Signed and notarised | ✓ | Unsigned; needs a Gatekeeper bypass on first launch |
| Install | DMG, updates in-app | DMG or Homebrew |
| Requirements | macOS 14+, Apple silicon and Intel | macOS 14+, Apple silicon and Intel |
- Dictation into any app (⌥⌘K) and rewriting any selected text with one shortcut (⌥⌘L), on your Mac
- Clipboard history at the cursor (⌃⌘V) with snippets, and Grab text (⌃⌘T) off any screen
- A teleprompter that stays out of recordings and screen shares
- Lyrics under the notch that fill in as they're sung
- Clipboard history, text and voice notes, and a task list
- Pomodoro, countdown and stopwatch with logging
- Screen time by app and a time log by category
- Hydration, calories, breathing and habits
- A signed, notarised build with automatic updates
- A music visualiser in the closed notch
- Replacement HUDs for volume, brightness and backlight
- Charging, battery and Bluetooth live activities
- Gestures, lock screen widgets, an extension system
- Source you can read and change
Themes are on the notchman roadmap and included in every license. HUD replacements and live activities are not planned.
Choose notchman if you want everything you copied one shortcut away (⌃⌘V), text you can grab off any screen (⌃⌘T) and a script that stays out of your recordings, and the small tools you reach for during the day close by, with your music and its lyrics too. It is a different use of the same space, and it does more with it.
Choose The Boring Notch if you want the notch to feel like a Dynamic Island: music, files, HUDs, live activities. It is free, and it is very good at that.
Try notchman on your own notch.
Pay once, use it every day.
One-time purchase, 14-day refund, everything stays on your Mac.
Updated 9 October 2026. The Boring Notch is a trademark of its owner; this page is an independent comparison.