Your notch, put to work

Your MacBook's notch is a black strip that does nothing. Koi lives there. Hover it and the notch opens down into a small black window with everything Koi does, one click each. Move away and it folds back up. It stays put: it can't be dragged or resized, and it never sits in the menu bar or the Dock.

On a Mac without a notch, Koi draws a small one of its own at the top of the screen, and everything opens from there.

Play a song in Spotify or Music and its artwork sits in the notch, with bars dancing beside it. Hover for a player: the artwork, the song and who it's by, how far in it is with the time gone and left, and shuffle, back, play or pause, next and the speakers. Pause, and Koi comes back. During a call, a dictation or a recording, Koi shows over the music.

The first time a song plays, macOS asks whether Koi may control Spotify or Music. Without it, the notch shows only what the app tells every app on the Mac: the song, who it's by, and whether it's playing. What's playing is held in memory to show in the notch: never stored, logged, measured or sent to our server. Step by step: how to show Spotify in the MacBook notch.

Folded, the notch widens for a few seconds when something changes:

• AirPods connect: the pair turning slowly, with their battery.
• The charger goes in or out: the battery and its level.
• The volume changes: the level.

They're read on the Mac and kept nowhere. “AirPods, charging and volume”, in Settings, Notch & tools, turns them off.

1. Drag files from Finder up to the notch. It widens into two spots: Files Tray and AirDrop.
2. Drop on Files Tray to keep them in the notch's Tray tab, ready to drag into any app later.
3. Or drop on AirDrop: macOS's AirDrop window opens to pick the iPhone, iPad or Mac to send them to.

The tray keeps a link to each file, never a copy, and AirDrop sends them itself, never through Koi's server. More in the Files Tray and how to AirDrop from the notch.

The Routines tab runs an AI task at the time you pick, like the news every weekday at 8, and the notch says when it's ready. See scheduled tasks.

In the notch's Tools, Teleprompter turns the notch into a black panel under the camera, with your script rolling up through it. It follows your voice, heard on your Mac and never sent, or scrolls at a steady speed. See the teleprompter.

The notch shows in your screenshots like anything else. But while a call app has the microphone, Koi records a call or the teleprompter is on, it's left out of what you share or record.

Boring Notch, Atoll, Droppy and Alcove also put music, files and status in the notch, and several are free or paid once. Koi is different in what opens from it: an assistant, dictation, call recording, your documents and calendar. All of them side by side are in the best notch apps for Mac, and if yours stopped working, see NotchNook and Boring Notch alternatives.

Koi is $20 a month or $7 for a first week, or Lifetime, paid once. It's paid from the first day, with no free trial. See the plans, or how to use the notch step by step.