NotchNook and Toolnotch both live in the MacBook notch, but they do different jobs. NotchNook is a dashboard: music controls, your calendar, notes, to-dos, timers and a tray for files. Toolnotch is a set of work tools: clipboard history, a window manager, eye breaks and keep-awake. If you want to see what's playing and when your next meeting starts, pick NotchNook. If you want to stop losing what you copied and stop rebuilding your windows every morning, pick Toolnotch. Plenty of people could use both.
I make Toolnotch, so read this with that in mind. I've tried to describe NotchNook from its own website and from reviews, and to say where it does better.
NotchNook's status in October 2026
If you searched "NotchNook alternative" because NotchNook stopped working, here is what happened. In September 2026 NotchNook went offline: the lo.cafe website stopped loading, its Setapp listing disappeared and Homebrew disabled its cask on 19 September. One report linked the outage to an ownership dispute at the developer, lo.cafe. In October it came back on a new site, getnotchnook.com, which opens with "NotchNook is back."
As of 20 October 2026, getnotchnook.com sells it at a special price of $15 for a lifetime licence (normally $25) or $2 a month (normally $3), with a 48-hour free trial and no card required. If you bought it before, check the new site's licence help page before reinstalling.
What each app does
| NotchNook | Toolnotch | |
|---|---|---|
| Music controls and Now Playing | Yes | No |
| Calendar with join buttons (Meet, Zoom, Teams, Webex) | Yes | No |
| Notes, to-dos, timers | Yes | No |
| Camera mirror | Yes | No |
| Run Apple Shortcuts from the notch | Yes | Toolnotch actions are available in Shortcuts (apply a desk, tidy windows, undo) |
| File tray / shelf in the notch | Yes (Tray, with AirDrop) | Yes (shelf, with AirDrop, Compress, Convert, Remove metadata) |
| Clipboard history | No | Yes (Pasteback, ⇧⌘C) |
| Copy text from anything on screen | No | Yes (⇧⌘2) |
| Search the words inside screenshots | No | Yes |
| Window snapping and layouts | No | Yes (Wyndow) |
| Windows restored after you unplug and replug a display | No | Yes |
| Eye-break reminders (20-20-20) | No | Yes (Bodybreak) |
| Keep the Mac awake | No | Yes (Staywake) |
| Works on Macs without a notch | Yes (a slim handle at the top) | Yes (panels hang from the menu bar) |
NotchNook features from getnotchnook.com, checked 20 October 2026.
Price and licence
| NotchNook | Toolnotch | |
|---|---|---|
| One-time price | $25 ($15 special price at the time of writing) | $19.99 ($4.99 for the first 10 buyers, then $9.99 for the next 100) |
| Subscription | $3 a month ($2 special price) | None |
| Macs per licence | 2 | 3 |
| Free trial | 48 hours, every feature | None. The demos on toolnotch.app run the real interface and shortcuts in your browser |
| Refund | 7 days, full | 14 days, full, no questions |
| Future tools | Updates included | Updates and every future Toolnotch tool included |
| macOS | 14.6 or later | 15 Sequoia or later |
| Apple silicon and Intel | Both | Both |
NotchNook's free trial is a real advantage. Toolnotch has no trial build: you buy it, and if it isn't for you within 14 days, you email for a refund.
The file shelf, side by side
This is the one job both apps share, so it's worth comparing in detail.
NotchNook's Tray takes files you drop on the notch and keeps them close until you drag them out, or sends them with AirDrop. Reviewers like it: Lifehacker called the Tray "quite useful".
Toolnotch's shelf lives inside Pasteback. You drag a file toward the notch and drop it on « Keep on the shelf ». A small tab under the notch shows what waits there; you drag files back out, one or several, into Mail, Slack or Finder. You can also drop an image straight on Compress or Remove metadata, and the result lands on your clipboard ready to paste. Compress keeps a PNG with transparency as a PNG and shows the size before and after. Convert handles JPEG, PNG, HEIC, WebP and AVIF. Remove metadata strips location, camera and date and lists what it removed.
Two more things the shelf does: new screenshots wait on their own row for 24 hours, so you can drag one into a chat without hunting through the Desktop, and your original files never move. Files leave the shelf after 7 days unless you pin them.
If moving files around is all you want from the notch, both apps cover it. Toolnotch adds the image actions.
What Toolnotch does that NotchNook doesn't
Pasteback, clipboard history. ⇧⌘C drops your history from the notch on the screen you're using. Links, code, commands and colours each show a preview. API keys and passwords show their first characters and then dots, and paste still sends the real value. Search finds the words inside screenshots and images, because Pasteback reads them in the background on your Mac. ⌃⌘C starts a Paste Stack: copy several things, and each ⌘V pastes the next one in order. ⇧⌘2 copies the text of anything on screen, such as a slide in a screen share or a paused video. History stays on your Mac: no cloud, no sync.
Wyndow, windows. Snap with ⌃⌥ and the arrows, cycle ½ → ⅔ → ⅓, undo with ⌃⌥⌫. The part people buy it for: unplug your external display and its windows land on the laptop in the same zones; plug it back in and each one returns to where it was. It survives closing the lid on the way home. Desks save every window across your macOS Spaces with ⌘S and put them back with ⌘1.
Bodybreak, eye breaks. Every 20 minutes the notch warns you, then asks you to look about 20 feet away for 20 seconds. It waits until you stop typing and pauses during calls, screen recordings, videos and full-screen games. It only checks that the microphone or camera is in use; nothing is recorded. Three styles: a small card, a card with a blurred screen, or a full-screen curtain.
Staywake, keep-awake. Click Notchi in the hub to keep the Mac awake for 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours or until you stop it. It also works on its own: while a terminal command is busy (a build, a download, an AI agent), the Mac stays awake, and it lets go two minutes after.
What NotchNook does that Toolnotch doesn't
Music. If you glance at the notch to skip a track or see the album art, NotchNook does that and Toolnotch doesn't. The calendar with one-click join buttons for Meet, Zoom, Teams and Webex is useful for anyone who lives in meetings. Notes, to-dos, timers and the camera mirror round it out. NotchNook has years of reviews behind it (The Verge, TechRadar, ZDNET, Macworld), and its site says more than 60,000 Mac users have bought it.
It also asks for fewer permissions for its core: Calendar, Camera for the mirror, Bluetooth and Automation. Toolnotch's window manager needs Accessibility, like every Mac window manager, and copying text from the screen needs Screen Recording the first time you use it.
Can you run both?
Yes, with two things to settle. NotchNook opens when you hover the notch. Toolnotch never opens on hover: its panels come from shortcuts (⇧⌘C for the clipboard, ⌃⌥N for the hub), a click on the notch or its menu bar icon, and a window or file dragged up to the notch. So the two mostly stay out of each other's way. The overlap is file drags: if you prefer NotchNook's Tray, turn off Toolnotch's shelf in Settings › Pasteback › Shelf so only one app reacts when you drag a file to the top of the screen.
Which one to choose
Choose NotchNook if you want a dashboard: music, calendar, notes and a file tray, with a free trial first.
Choose Toolnotch if your day is copying, pasting and moving windows between a laptop and a monitor, and you want breaks that don't interrupt calls. One licence covers three Macs and includes every tool Toolnotch adds later.
Choose Boring Notch if you want music and a file shelf for free: it's open source.
You can try Toolnotch's clipboard, breaks and window demos in your browser on toolnotch.app, or see pricing.