Everything your MacBook’s notch can show you

What’s next and what’s playing

Your next meeting counts down from your calendar, so “in 6 minutes” is always in sight. Whatever’s playing, in Music, Spotify or your browser, shows its cover by the camera and a little wave on the other side.

When you press a key

• Volume and mute, with the level and its number.
• Brightness and the keyboard light, as you change them.
• Caps Lock, on or off, flashed for a moment.
• Input language, when you switch keyboards.

They turn up in the notch, right where you’re already looking.

Your Mac and its gadgets

• Plug in the charger and see how full the battery is.
• Earbuds, headphones, a mouse or a keyboard connect with their name and battery, AirPods’ left, right and case included.
• Switch where the sound goes, and the notch says which device it’s playing on now.
• When the Internet drops and comes back, a short note says so.

Work in progress

• Downloads from your browser, with their real progress.
• Coding agents at work: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Antigravity and Hermes.
• Pull requests from those sessions: reviews, merge conflicts and checks.
• Timers, the stopwatch and the Focus Timer, counting.
• AirDrop from the tray, and how many files are waiting there.
• Keep Awake, and how long it has left.
• Focus, and which one is on.

Then it gets out of the way

When nothing’s happening, the notch goes back to plain black. Watching a film full screen? The music and video bar steps aside until you’re back. And in Settings › Notch › Activities, you choose which of these show up at all.