NotchFree

A lightweight macOS utility that brings two iPhone-style niceties to your Mac:

1. Dynamic Island — hover the top-middle of the screen and the notch briefly puffs out (peek); hold for ¾ of a second and the panel drops down into the full media UI (artwork, title, artist, play/pause/skip, and seek bar). When audio is playing the collapsed island widens into a compact pill showing the album cover on the left and an animated waveform on the right (frozen when paused). Blends seamlessly into the physical notch on notched MacBooks; falls back to a floating pill on non-notched displays.
2. iPhone-style volume HUD — the native macOS volume HUD is suppressed. In its place, a tall pill with a frosted vibrancy track appears flush against the right edge of the screen, showing the current volume, the output device icon (built-in speakers, AirPods, Bluetooth, USB, AirPlay), and the device name. The speaker glyph inverts color across the fill boundary, matching the iOS 17+ volume indicator.

Runs as a menu bar agent with no Dock icon. Auto-updates via Sparkle.

Website: https://notchfree.kaisong.xyz Download: https://github.com/KaiSong06/NotchFree/releases/latest

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Install

1. Download the latest DMG from Releases.
2. Open the DMG and drag NotchFree.app into /Applications.
3. Launch the app. Grant Accessibility permission when prompted (required for the volume HUD feature to intercept hardware volume keys; the Dynamic Island works without it).
4. Optionally toggle Open at Login from the menu bar icon.

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Build from source

Requirements:

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
• Xcode 16+
• XcodeGen: brew install xcodegen

xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project better-mac.xcodeproj -scheme better-mac -configuration Debug build
open "$(xcodebuild -project better-mac.xcodeproj -scheme better-mac -showBuildSettings 2>/dev/null | awk -F'=' '/BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR/ {gsub(/ /,"",$2); print $2; exit}')/NotchFree.app"

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Release pipeline

One-time setup (per machine)

1. Install tooling

   brew install xcodegen create-dmg

2. Create a Developer ID Application certificate. At https://developer.apple.com/account → Certificates → + → Developer ID Application. Download the .cer and double-click to add it to the login keychain. Verify:

   security find-identity -v -p codesigning | grep "Developer ID Application"

3. Generate a Sparkle EdDSA signing key. The private key stays in your login keychain; the public key is already in project.yml → SUPublicEDKey. If you ever rotate the key, regenerate and update the plist entry.

4. Set up notarization credentials.

   ./scripts/setup-notary.sh

   This stores an Apple ID + app-specific password under a keychain profile (default: better-mac-notary). Generate the app-specific password at https://appleid.apple.com → Sign-In and Security → App-Specific Passwords.

5. Export required env vars (e.g. in ~/.zshrc):

   export DEVELOPER_ID_APPLICATION="Developer ID Application: Your Name (TEAMID1234)"
   export TEAM_ID="TEAMID1234"
   export NOTARY_KEYCHAIN_PROFILE="better-mac-notary"

Cut a release

./scripts/release.sh 0.1.0

This will:

1. Bump MARKETING_VERSION in project.yml and increment CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION.
2. Regenerate the Xcode project.
3. Archive → export a Developer ID signed NotchFree.app.
4. Submit the .app to Apple notarization (waits for the ticket).
5. Staple the ticket.
6. Package as NotchFree-0.1.0.dmg (drag-to-Applications DMG via create-dmg).
7. Sign + notarize + staple the DMG.
8. Compute the Sparkle EdDSA signature of the DMG and append a new <item> to docs/appcast.xml.

Then commit and push:

git add project.yml docs/appcast.xml
git commit -m "release: v0.1.0"
git tag v0.1.0
git push && git push --tags
gh release create v0.1.0 --generate-notes build/NotchFree-0.1.0.dmg

GitHub Pages (serving /docs on main) then has the updated appcast.xml live at https://KaiSong06.github.io/NotchFree/appcast.xml, so existing installs pick up the update on their next Sparkle check.

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Architecture

• Media info — uses the private MediaRemote.framework (via dlopen + CFBundleGetFunctionPointerForName) to subscribe to system-wide Now Playing updates. Falls back to AppleScript polling of Spotify when MediaRemote goes silent.
• Notch detection — uses NSScreen.safeAreaInsets plus auxiliaryTopLeftArea / auxiliaryTopRightArea to compute the notch rect on any notched MacBook. Non-notched displays render a floating pill instead.
• Volume key handling — a CGEventTap at .cgSessionEventTap intercepts NSSystemDefined subtype-8 events (the ones the hardware volume keys produce) and returns nil from the callback so macOS never sees them. The interceptor then sets the volume via AudioObjectSetPropertyData on kAudioDevicePropertyVolumeScalar of the current default output device.
• Output device classification — uses kAudioDevicePropertyTransportType plus a name-contains check for "AirPods" / "Beats".
• Auto-updates — Sparkle 2 reads SUFeedURL and SUPublicEDKey from Info.plist. The private EdDSA key lives in the Keychain; sign_update (bundled in the Sparkle SPM artifact) produces the signature for each DMG during release.

Project structure

better-mac/
├── better-mac/
│   ├── App/          # App lifecycle, status bar, settings, updater
│   ├── Island/       # Dynamic Island NSPanel + SwiftUI content
│   ├── Media/        # MediaRemote bridge + Spotify fallback
│   ├── Volume/       # CGEventTap + CoreAudio + HUD pill
│   ├── Support/      # Logger, Permissions, NSScreen+Notch
│   └── Resources/    # Info.plist, Assets
├── better-macTests/  # Unit tests
├── docs/             # GitHub Pages site + appcast.xml
├── scripts/          # release.sh, setup-notary.sh, generate-icon.py
└── project.yml       # XcodeGen spec

Acknowledgements

Technique references (no code copied):

• Atoll — MediaRemote dlopen pattern, notch geometry
• NotchDrop — notch width math
• volumeHUD — CGEventTap for volume keys
• volume-grid — CoreAudio default-output listener
• Sparkle — auto-update framework