Toolnotch vs Boring Notch: free music notch or paid work tools

Boring Notch and Toolnotch both live in the MacBook notch, but only one job overlaps. Boring Notch is a free, open-source media centre: hover over the notch to see what's playing, control it, check your calendar and drop files on a shelf. Toolnotch is a paid set of work tools: clipboard history, a window manager, eye breaks and keep-awake. If you want music in the notch and don't want to pay, Boring Notch is the answer. If you want the notch to save you time at work, that's Toolnotch.

I make Toolnotch, so weigh this accordingly. Everything about Boring Notch below comes from its GitHub page and website, checked 20 October 2026.

What each app does

Boring Notch's roadmap lists Bluetooth devices, weather, lock screen widgets, extensions and notifications as not done yet.

Price, licence and install

Boring Notch's price is hard to beat. The install is the one real friction: because the app isn't signed, macOS refuses to open it the first time. The README gives a one-line Terminal command to fix that, or brew install --cask TheBoredTeam/boring-notch/boring-notch, which handles it for you.

What Boring Notch does better

Music. Hover over the notch and you get the album art, a live visualizer and playback controls, with gestures you can customise. It replaces the stock volume, brightness and keyboard backlight overlays with ones that fit the notch, which many people install it for on its own. The calendar, reminders, battery status and camera mirror are useful glances.

It's also open source, with about 11,000 stars on GitHub and an active community. You can read the code, report a bug in public, and the 2.8 release candidates show steady work: a setting to follow the active display, better album art for streamed Apple Music tracks.

And it costs nothing. If music and a shelf are all you want, there's no reason to pay for a notch app.

What Toolnotch does that Boring Notch doesn't

Pasteback, clipboard history. ⇧⌘C drops your history from the notch. Links, code, commands and colours show previews. Passwords and API keys show their first characters, then dots, and still paste the real value. Search finds words inside screenshots and images, read on your Mac. ⌃⌘C starts a Paste Stack: copy several things and each ⌘V pastes the next one. ⇧⌘2 copies the text of anything on screen. See how to see your clipboard history on a Mac.

Wyndow, windows. Snap with ⌃⌥ and the arrows, cycle ½ → ⅔ → ⅓, undo with ⌃⌥⌫. Unplug your external display and its windows land on the laptop in the same zones; plug it back in and each returns where it was, even after closing the lid on the way home. Desks save every window across your Spaces. See why windows move when you unplug a monitor.

Bodybreak, eye breaks. Every 20 minutes, look away for 20 seconds. It waits until you stop typing and stays quiet during calls, screen recordings, videos and full-screen games.

Staywake, keep-awake. Keep the Mac awake for 30 minutes, an hour, three hours or until you stop it. It also stays awake by itself while a terminal command works, and tells you when a long job finished.

The file shelf, compared

Both apps hold files you drag to the notch and let you AirDrop them. Boring Notch keeps it simple. Toolnotch's shelf adds three image actions: drop an image on Compress, Convert (JPEG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, AVIF) or Remove metadata, and the result lands on your clipboard ready to paste. New screenshots wait on their own row for 24 hours (how that works). Files leave the shelf after 7 days unless you pin them.

Can you run both?

Yes. Boring Notch opens on hover; Toolnotch never does, so they don't compete for the same gesture. The overlap is the file shelf: if you prefer Boring Notch's, turn Toolnotch's off in Settings › Pasteback › Shelf so only one app reacts when you drag a file to the top of the screen.

Running both is a reasonable setup: Boring Notch for the music, Toolnotch for the work.

Which one to choose

Choose Boring Notch if you want music controls, a calendar glance and a file shelf, and you'd rather not pay. Expect one Terminal command at install.

Choose Toolnotch if you copy and paste all day, move between a laptop and an external monitor, or want breaks that don't interrupt calls. One licence covers three Macs and every tool Toolnotch adds later.

For the wider field (NotchNook, Alcove, DynamicLake Pro), see the best notch apps for Mac. To try Toolnotch's demos in your browser, go to toolnotch.app, or see pricing.

FAQ

Is Boring Notch free?

Yes. Boring Notch is free and open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. The developers accept donations on Ko-fi.

Is Boring Notch safe to install?

Its code is public on GitHub, which lets anyone check it. It isn't signed with an Apple developer account, which is why macOS warns you at first launch. Install it from its official GitHub page or with Homebrew, not from a third-party download site.

Does Boring Notch have a clipboard manager?

No. As of version 2.7.3, Boring Notch has a file shelf but no clipboard history. Toolnotch's Pasteback is a full clipboard history in the notch.

What's the best Boring Notch alternative?

For the same kind of app, paid: NotchNook or Alcove. For different jobs in the notch (clipboard, windows, eye breaks), Toolnotch. See NotchNook alternatives for the full list.