Changelog · Dynotch

1.4.1

31 October 2026 · Release notes and downloads

1.4.1 follows a full review of the 1.4.0 redesign. Everything works as before, and your settings stay.

Glass is easier to read. Liquid Glass is darker, so white text stays clear over bright wallpapers. If you use the Glass material, you'll see the difference right away.
Hints you can read. Placeholder text in fields, in the notch and in Settings, is no longer faint, and it steps aside while you type with an input method.
Dark covers show up. Music with a deep blue, purple or red cover keeps its bars and scrubber visible.
Nothing collides or cuts off. The Allow Bluetooth prompt fits at every size, hour-long times stay on one line in the Focus dial and the player, the Control tab's columns line up, and the header clears the content on displays without a notch.
Tidier Tray and Settings. Tray files run to the edge of the shelf. The Settings header meets the sidebar with no seam, and buttons no longer cut off their names.
Accessibility. Reduce Motion now covers the Tray, timers, swiping between tabs, Settings and the Welcome tour. VoiceOver reads the player as a whole before the card beside it.

1.4.0

30 October 2026 · Release notes and downloads

1.4.0 redesigns the whole app. Everything works as before, and your settings, accent color and shortcuts stay.

Lit Glass. Cards, buttons and fields are layers of glass lit from above, with edges that catch the light. The selected tab is a jewel in your accent color, and the command field shows its shortcut as keys: ⌃ ⌥ K.
A player lit by the music. The title is bigger and bolder, the cover's colors light the player, and the play button is a pearl.
Easier to read. Sliders show their percentage, the Pomodoro dial has ticks, and the closed notch shows a song's title in white with the artist beside it in grey. Text keeps a clear contrast in every accent color.
The Tray has a shelf. Files sit on it, and drop zones light up as you drag over them.
Settings to match. The header with the model of your notch turns light in light mode, each page has a colored icon, and the cards and controls are restyled. The Welcome tour, the capture toolbar and the app icon follow the same style.
Accessibility settings are followed. With Reduce Motion on, things fade instead of sliding or growing. Increase Contrast and Reduce Transparency each change how the notch draws.

1.3.0

28 October 2026 · Release notes and downloads

Updates install from Dynotch itself. When a new version is out, Settings → About shows Install and Relaunch. Dynotch downloads it, checks that it's Dynotch, newer, and signed with the same certificate as your copy, puts it in place and reopens, saying "Updated" in the notch. Settings, notes, the Tray and the permissions you gave it stay.
A tampered download is refused. Only the key that signs Dynotch's releases can make an app that passes the check, and an older version can't be passed off as an update.
Download is still there. If your copy can't replace itself, for example because it runs straight from the disk image, Download opens the disk image as before. A failed install says why and offers Download and Try Again.

1.2.1

28 October 2026 · Release notes and downloads

Fixes for what turned up in 1.2.0.

Swipe through the widgets beside the player. A swipe up or down over the stack turns it to the next or previous card, the way the content would scroll. A card with more than it shows, like a long note or the batteries, scrolls first, and the next swipe at its end turns the stack. The dots on its edge still work.
The open notch fits every size in Settings. At the smaller widths and heights in Settings → Appearance → Open notch, the Control tab ran off the bottom, the batteries spilled past their card and the calendar's later events were cut off. In a short notch, the sliders now drop their names and the tiles their state line, and everything stays inside.
Long lists scroll. The Batteries card lists every device, connected or paired, instead of stopping after four. Over a list with more than it shows, swiping up scrolls it rather than closing the notch.
No more ring that never goes away. With "Listen for Siri" on, macOS keeps the microphone input open all the time, and the orange on-air ring stayed around the closed notch. Like macOS's own indicator, the ring now leaves Siri's listening out, and lights up only when an app is actually recording.
The Tray's drop area fills the tab. In an empty tray, the dashed area for dropping files now takes the whole tab instead of half of it. With a few files in, it takes the room they leave.
Favorites. The star beside the song title shows for every Apple Music track. Spotify doesn't let other apps like songs, so there's no star while Spotify plays.

1.2.0

27 October 2026 · Release notes and downloads

Capture, Flameshot style. ⌃⌥S, Capture Screen in the menu bar menu, the Control tab's Capture tile or dynotch capture freezes every display under a dimmed overlay. Drag out a region or click for the whole display, move it or resize it by its handles, then mark it up with a pencil, line, arrow, rectangle, ellipse, marker, text, blur or numbered counters (P, L, A, R, C, M, T, B, N), in eight colors and any width from 1 to 16 points; ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z undo and redo. Copy (⌘C) puts it on the clipboard, Save (⌘S) writes a PNG where the Screenshot app saves, named as macOS names its own, so it lands in the Tray too, Add to Tray does that and opens the Tray, and Pin floats it above every window. Return does what Settings → Tray says. Needs Screen Recording, asked for the first time.
The open notch, redesigned. The tabs share one track with a Type a command ⌃⌥K button and a ··· menu. The player sits on the notch on a glow in the album's color, and the two widgets beside it share a stack that turns to the calendar before an event, the weather before rain and the batteries when one runs low. The calendar is now Up next, the Tray has bigger tiles with sizes and a toolbar, Focus is two cards, and the Stats tab is now Control, with toggle tiles, brightness and volume sliders, an output menu, battery rings and a one-line system footer. Links and scripts still call it stats.
A glance on hover. Resting the pointer on the closed notch grows it into a glance at what's live, with a control or two: music with skip and play, a timer with pause and +1 min, a meeting with Join, a download, the last notice, or, with nothing live, the day. A click or a swipe down opens the full notch; Settings → General → Hover shows brings back the old behavior.
A command field. ⌃⌥K takes timers (tea 4m), notes, reminders with a time (remind Call Sam 5pm), toggles (dark, awake, mute), profiles, shortcuts (run …), sums (18% of 240) and unit conversions (5 km to mi), and searches notes and Tray files.
Hardened. The app is signed with the hardened runtime, so other processes can't load code into it and use the permissions you gave it. dynotch://tray/add points at files instead of copying them and skips ~/Library; notices posted by a link carry a terminal badge; the Focus report is a Save button under Settings → About → Diagnostics instead of a link; notification peeks stay hidden while a Focus is on or a display is mirrored.

1.1.0

27 October 2026 · Release notes and downloads

A line instead of a notch on other displays. On a display without a camera notch, Settings → Appearance → Virtual notch now offers Line beside Notch: a faint line along the top edge that covers nothing. It swells under the pointer, and grows into the notch while something's showing, when you hover and when it opens, then shrinks back. Profiles keep the choice along with the width.
Swipe between tabs. Two fingers sideways over the open notch move between Nook, Tray, Focus and Stats: left for the next tab, right for the one before. Over the closed notch, or the open notch's header, the same swipe still skips a track, and the Tray's strip of files keeps its own sideways scrolling once it runs over.
Check for updates. Settings → About has an Updates card, and the menu bar menu a Check for Updates… item, that ask GitHub for the newest release and say whether you have it. With Check automatically on (it is, unless you turn it off), Dynotch asks once a day, a little after launch, and announces a new version in the notch. The check is one request to api.github.com carrying nothing but the app's version. Download opens the new disk image in your browser; Dynotch doesn't install anything by itself.

Fixed

The first two rows of the Settings sidebar, General and Appearance, didn't react to clicks: the page header's glow stretched invisibly over them and took the clicks. It no longer does.

1.0.0

27 October 2026 · Release notes and downloads

What's in it

The notch: opens on hover, click, a trackpad swipe or ⌃⌥N. Black or Liquid Glass (macOS 26 and later) with an accent color, and a virtual notch on displays without one.
Live activities beside the camera: music, track changes, timers, the volume and brightness HUD, charging and low battery, upcoming events, Bluetooth devices connecting, downloads, screenshots, rain about to start, the Focus that's on, camera and mic in use, and notification peeks from Messages, Mail, Slack and other apps.
Nook: a player for Apple Music and Spotify, with two widgets beside it: Calendar, Mirror, Shortcuts, Focus timer, Batteries, Quick toggles, Notes or Weather.
Tray: drop files on the notch to keep them, AirDrop them, compress them or copy them somewhere. Quick Look, and new screenshots land there.
Focus tab: Pomodoro, named timers ("tea 4m"), Reminders, and Markdown notes that can live in iCloud Drive.
Stats: CPU, memory, disk and network, device batteries with connect and disconnect, and quick toggles.
Profiles that switch with a Focus or an external display, a welcome tour, and energy care that rests the notch while the screen is asleep or locked and in Low Power Mode.
Scripting: dynotch:// links and a dynotch command, for example to show a notice when a long build finishes.