Live activities in the notch
Music, calendar, calls, and AirPods status render in the island instead of stealing a window.
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Notch Bay : Dynamic island for Mac
notchbay.comThe MacBook notch, turned into a Dynamic Island that does real work
About
Notch Bay : Dynamic island for Mac
macOS ships no Dynamic Island. NotchBay puts one there.
Open it once and an island settles in around your MacBook's notch. No account, no setup wizard, no Electron. It's a single native Swift app.
The island shows live activities for music, calendar, calls and AirPods. Your next meeting appears as a chip two minutes out with a Join button, then swaps to mute, stop video, and leave controls that keep working while Zoom is buried three windows deep. It replaces the system volume and brightness HUD so those stop landing in the middle of your screen. A clipboard tray holds what you copy, including screen captures, with OCR on images. On-device dictation runs on Apple's SpeechAnalyzer, which means audio never leaves the Mac.
Per-app skins reshape the island around whatever app is in front. Messages mirror to the notch with quick reply. Drag a file to the island to share it through Google Drive, the app's one optional network feature.
On Macs without a notch, and on external displays, NotchBay runs as a floating island at the top of the screen. It never draws a fake notch over your display.
Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later, since the dictation engine ships with that release. Works on MacBook Pro from 2021 on and MacBook Air from the M2 in 2022 on.
One-time purchase, every update included, license key by email, unlocks one Mac for good.
Updated July 27, 2026✓
Key Features
One-tap meeting join
Your next calendar event appears two minutes out with a Join button, then becomes call controls.
Zoom and Meet call controls
Mute, stop video, or leave from the notch with a live timer, even when the call app is buried.
Clipboard tray with OCR
Everything you copy lands in the tray, screen captures included, with text pulled out of images.
On-device dictation
Transcription runs on Apple's SpeechAnalyzer locally. Audio never leaves the machine.
Per-app skins
The island reshapes itself around whatever app is in front, so the notch matches what you're doing.
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Use Cases
- People in back-to-back meetings— Join from the notch and mute without hunting for the Zoom window.
- Developers— Keep build status, clipboard, and dictation in the notch instead of a crowded menu bar.
- Writers and note-takers— Dictate locally into the tray, then paste anywhere, with nothing sent to a server.
- Designers— Drag screenshots to the island, OCR the text out, share through Drive without opening a browser.
- Privacy-conscious Mac users— Everything processes on-device. The only network feature is optional Drive sharing.
- External display users— The island floats at the top of any screen, notch or not, so the workflow survives the dock.