Everything NotchDesk does

The full list, feature by feature, with every setting and shortcut. One license unlocks all of it, and the 14-day trial includes everything.

Your next meeting, always in view

NotchDesk reads the calendars already on your Mac, including iCloud, Google and Exchange accounts you’ve added to macOS, and shows your next event beside the notch with a live countdown as it gets close (within 2 hours by default; you choose anywhere from 15 minutes to 12 hours).

A countdown in the menu bar
Your next event and the time until it starts. Want work and personal kept apart? Show one menu bar item per account.
Join in one click
Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, FaceTime and Slack huddle links turn into a Join button. Whereby, Amazon Chime and Cal.com Video links work too, and so do ZoomGov links and links wrapped by Outlook Safe Links. A button beside Join copies the meeting link, and joins from any app.
More about the calendar
The whole event, on hover
Hover the notch for your agenda, then pick an event: time, calendar and account, location (opens in Maps), organizer, your RSVP, who’s coming and what they replied, whether it repeats, and the notes. Join it, open it in Calendar or copy it.
Only what matters
Canceled events never appear, and declined ones are hidden unless you choose to show them. You decide whether all-day events show and how far ahead to look, from 1 to 30 days.

Make it yours in Settings

  • Hide whole calendar accounts you don’t need to see.
  • Show the next event’s title in the menu bar, or just the countdown.
  • Choose how early the event appears beside the notch, or turn that off.
  • Launch at login, and ⌘-drag the menu bar items into the order you like.
Or split it up: one menu bar item per account.

New in 1.3

A notch built for meetings

Join with one key, get a heads-up that grows out of the notch a minute before each event, and keep an eye on the time while a call runs.

Join with one key
Press in any app to join the meeting in progress, or the next video meeting starting within 10 minutes (you can set up to an hour). copies its link instead. With nothing to join, the notch opens on your calendar.
An alert you won’t miss
A minute before each event (or at the start, or up to 10 minutes before), the notch grows into an alert with a live countdown, Join (or Open in Calendar), Snooze for 1 or 5 minutes, and Dismiss. You can limit it to meetings with a video link. All-day events and meetings you declined are skipped, and nothing pops up while your screen is locked. If you’ve turned the notch off, you get a notification instead.
More about meetings
Live beside the notch, while you talk
During a video meeting, the notch shows how long is left with a progress line, plus a red dot when your microphone or camera seems to be in use (some headsets also trigger it during plain playback). Two minutes before the end, it tells you if the next meeting starts within 5 minutes.
Check your camera first
Switch on Check camera in the alert for a quick mirror before you join. The camera only turns on when you switch it on, turns off when the alert closes, and nothing is recorded or sent anywhere.
Open links your way
Choose how each service’s Join button opens: Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings in their apps, or any service in a browser you pick. Webex and Slack open their web page, which hands off to the app, and without the app, links open in your browser. Google Meet can open signed in to the Google account of the calendar the event is on.

Your countdown, your rules

  • Keep tentative events, unanswered invitations, events without a video link, or titles like “lunch” or “focus” out of the countdown.
  • Skip a single meeting, or one occurrence of a repeating one, in the countdown.
  • A status line above the agenda: “Standup · 12m left”, “Free for 45m” or “Free until 3:00 PM”.
  • A warning in the event details when it overlaps another event or runs straight into the next one.
A minute before the call, the notch grows into an alert. Check camera shows a mirror first, and during the call the time left stays beside the notch.

New in 1.3

Plan the day from the notch

Tasks next to your events, a month at a glance, and a focus timer that knows when your next meeting starts.

  • Reminders beside your eventsReminders due today, and any that are overdue, appear above your agenda. Check one off right in the notch, or click it to open Reminders.
  • Quick add, in plain EnglishPress and type “Lunch w/ Sam Fri 1pm 45m /work” for a 45-minute event in your Work calendar. “Pay invoice tomorrow” becomes a reminder. You get a few seconds to undo. English only for now.
  • A Month tab, with world clocksA month grid with event dots and optional ISO week numbers (press W), plus up to four world clocks with day, night and working-hours markers. A time-travel slider moves every clock up to 12 hours either way.
  • Focus until your next meetingStart a session that ends 2 minutes before your next meeting, or press . A countdown sits beside the notch, streaks and a weekly chart keep score, and NotchDesk can block the time in your calendar and run a Shortcut when a session starts and ends.
  • Weather, at event timeCurrent conditions above the agenda, and the forecast where you are for each event in the next two days. Off until you turn it on. Forecasts come from Open-Meteo.
  • Time to leaveFor today’s events with a street address, NotchDesk checks the travel time from where you are with Apple Maps and tells you when to leave. Off until you turn it on.

A shelf for everything you copy

Text, links, code, colors, images, files and screenshots go into a private history on your Mac. Each clip is sorted by type and tagged with the app it came from. Press , or hover the notch and switch to Clipboard.

Click to paste
Click a card and NotchDesk pastes it into the app you’re using. Or drag it out and drop it into any app.
Drop to stash
Drop text, images or files on the open shelf to keep them in your history. Files are kept as links to where they live, so they don’t take up extra space. Dragging files onto the closed notch opens the file shelf instead.
More about the shelf
Search and filter
Find a clip by its words, its app or its type, right in the notch.
A quiet “Copied”
Each copy gets a short flash beside the notch, so you know it worked.

Pasting for you needs macOS Accessibility permission. Without it, NotchDesk copies the clip and you press ⌘V. About permissions

Drop things on the shelf to stash them. Every copy gets a “Copied” flash.

Paste from your history without touching the mouse

Press in any app. A search panel opens over whatever you’re doing. Type a few letters, press Return, and the clip is pasted where your cursor was (or copied for you to paste, if you haven’t allowed Accessibility).

Built for the keyboard
↩ pastes, ⌘↩ copies, ⌘1–⌘9 pick one of the latest clips, ⇥ switches the type filter, ⌘P pins and ⌘⌫ deletes. It waits for Japanese, Chinese and Korean input methods to finish before acting on a key.
Your last 10 clips, one click away
The menu bar dropdown has a Clipboard tab with your ten most recent clips.
Pin what you reuse
Pinned clips stay at hand and are never trimmed from the history.

Find the screenshot by what it says

Press for the Library: every clip in a grid, a sidebar by type, by app and by categories you make, and an inspector with the full preview.

Text in images is searchable
NotchDesk reads the text in screenshots and images on your Mac, using Apple’s Vision framework. Search “gate 22” and the boarding pass turns up. Click Copy text to use it.
Your own categories
Make categories like Work or Travel and drag cards onto them.
More about the Library
Multi-clips
Select several clips (⌘-click or ⇧-click) and combine them into one card. Pasting it drops all their text in one go, with images and files included where the app accepts them.
Reminders and screenshots
Ask a clip to remind you in 30 minutes, 1 or 3 hours, this evening, tomorrow at 9 AM, next week or at a time you pick. The notification has Copy and Show in Library buttons. New screenshots are added to your history automatically.

New in 1.3

Clipboard power tools

Paste exactly what you meant, in the order you meant, and reshape a clip without opening another app.

  • Paste as plain textPress to paste what’s on your clipboard without its fonts and colors. Apps on your always-plain list, like Terminal, Xcode and VS Code, always get plain text when NotchDesk pastes a clip for you.
  • Paste StackAdd clips to a stack, then press to paste them one after another, in the order you added them or newest first. The notch shows how many are left. Handy for forms and spreadsheets.
  • 27 text transformsTitle Case, camelCase or snake_case, sort or dedupe lines, pretty-print or minify JSON, Base64 and URL encoding, strip tracking parameters from links, decode a JWT, SHA-256 and more.
  • Image actionsConvert an image to PNG, JPEG or HEIC, compress or resize it, strip its metadata, or remove the background from a photo with a clear subject. It all happens on your Mac.
  • Snippets that know your calendarType ;late and get “Running 5 minutes late for Design review — be there soon.” Placeholders like {next_meeting_link}, {next_meeting_attendees}, {clipboard} and {cursor} fill themselves in. Import from Raycast or Espanso.
  • A file shelf, with AirDropDrag files onto the notch and drop them on Keep to hold them, or on AirDrop to send them. Drag them back out into any app and preview them with Quick Look. Items are cleared after 7 days unless you choose 1 or 3 days or never. Keep as many items as you like.
The little things: details that make the clipboard feel at home on a Mac
  • Colors, however you copy themHex, rgb() and hsl() values are saved as colors, with a swatch.
  • Code looks like codeSnippets are spotted by their shape, and copies from editors and terminals such as Xcode, VS Code and Terminal are filed as code more readily.
  • Any keyboard layoutClick-to-paste and Quick Paste work with Dvorak, AZERTY and other layouts.
  • Input methods welcomeQuick Paste waits for Japanese, Chinese and Korean input to finish composing.
  • Pause in one clickStop and resume capture from the menu bar dropdown.
  • Careful clearingClear history keeps your pinned and categorized clips.

New in 1.3

Where your calendar and clipboard meet

NotchDesk knows what you copied and which meeting you were in at the time, so it can connect the two.

  • Clips that remember the meetingAnything you copy during a meeting is linked to it. Open the event to find those clips (and, for a repeating meeting, clips from an earlier one), your own notes for it, and one-click copies of the join link, attendee emails and dial-in details.
  • Add to Calendar from what you copyCopy a message or an email with a date and time, and NotchDesk offers to turn it into an event with the details filled in. Add it as it is, or edit it first.
  • Copy my availabilityPress and your free times are copied as text, ready to paste into a reply. They’re worked out on your Mac from your calendars, your working hours and a buffer you choose, in your time zone or the recipient’s.

New in 1.4

Tools in your notch

Hover the notch and open the new Tools tab: a grid of small tools for the things you reach for all day. Use a tile right there, or expand it for the full view.

  • Quick NotesPress in any app for a new note. Pin and search notes, tick off - [ ] checklists in the notch and export them as Markdown. They’re saved on your Mac only.
  • Timers, stopwatch and alarmsStart a timer in one click and watch it count down beside the notch. When it ends, the notch opens with Stop, +1 min and +5 min. A stopwatch with laps, and alarms for once or chosen weekdays. They go off while NotchDesk is running.
  • Calculator and converterType “15% off 80” or “5 km in mi” and the answer appears as you type; Return copies it. The full view keeps a history and converts length, temperature, data and more. It converts currencies too.
  • Color pickerPress and click anything on screen to copy its color as HEX, RGB, HSL, HSB, CSS, SwiftUI, NSColor or UIColor. Recent colors stay in a palette, and any two can be checked for WCAG contrast.
  • Screen toolsSelect an area to copy it as an image, or turn text or a link into a QR code. copies the text in an area, and Scan QR reads QR codes and barcodes. It all happens on your Mac.
  • System monitorCPU, memory, network and disk use at a glance, with charts, battery health and thermal state in the full view. A small CPU, memory or network readout can sit beside the notch.
  • Quick togglesKeep the Mac awake, switch Dark Mode, hide desktop icons, lock the screen, sleep the display or mute your mic in one click. Keep Awake doesn’t stop the Mac sleeping when you close the lid.
  • DownloadsWhen a download finishes, the notch tells you. Hover for a preview with Open, Show in Finder, Add to Shelf, AirDrop and Copy. The tile lists your latest downloads, ready to drag out.
  • Dictionary and TranslateDefinitions as you type, offline, from the dictionaries built into macOS. Translate needs macOS 15 or later and uses Apple’s on-device translation.
  • Shortcuts launcherPin up to 12 of your shortcuts and run them from the notch, with text you type or your latest clip as input. Progress and the result show beside the notch.
  • Countdowns and breaksCount down to a trip, a launch or a birthday that comes round every year, or import birthdays and holidays from your calendars. Optional reminders to take a break, rest your eyes (20‑20‑20), drink water or stand up hold off during calendar events.
  • Mirror tabCheck how you look before any call, not only from the meeting alert: a live, mirrored camera preview in its own notch tab, with a camera picker and a ring light. The camera runs only while the tab is open, and nothing is recorded.
Make the notch yours: tabs, tools and the closed notch
  • Reorder the notch tabs, or hide the ones you don’t use, in Settings → General. The Calendar tab always stays.
  • Turn single tools off, so the Tools tab only shows the ones you use.
  • Choose the tab the notch opens on: Calendar, the last tab you used, or any other.
  • Scroll on the closed notch to change the volume, or the built-in display’s brightness where macOS allows it.
  • A haptic tap when the notch opens, on a Force Touch trackpad. Turn it off if you’d rather not feel it.

New in 1.3

More in the notch

Music, battery and headphones beside the notch, on whichever display you want it.

  • Now PlayingBest effort: what’s playing in Music or Spotify, with artwork, play/pause, skip and a scrubber in a Music tab. On macOS 15.4 and later only Music and Spotify can be shown; on earlier versions, other players appear too. Controls depend on what macOS and each player allow.
  • BatteryA short notice beside the notch when you plug in or unplug, and a warning when the battery drops to 20% and 10%.
  • Volume and brightnessVolume, mute and brightness changes show as a bar beside the notch. Brightness works on the built-in display where macOS allows it, and macOS still shows its own indicator too.
  • HeadphonesSee when your Bluetooth headphones connect or disconnect, with the battery level when macOS reports it (many headphones don’t). Off until you turn it on.
  • Pick the displayKeep the notch on the built-in display, put it on your main display, or have it follow the mouse, and switch it off on any display. Displays without a notch get a small island, in compact or regular size.
  • Out of the way in full screenThe notch steps aside when an app goes full screen and comes back when you leave. Meeting alerts still show, and the shortcuts still open it. If it hides when it shouldn’t, turn this off in Settings → Displays.

New in 1.3

Ask Siri about your day

NotchDesk comes with 14 ready-made voice shortcuts. Add them in Settings → Siri & Shortcuts, one click each, then ask Siri on your Mac. Questions about your calendar are answered out loud and beside the notch.

  1. Hey Siri, what’s my next meeting?

    NotchDeskYour next meeting is Design review at 4 PM, in 16 minutes, with Maya Chen and 3 others. It has a Google Meet link.

  2. Hey Siri, what’s on my calendar tomorrow?

    NotchDeskYou have 3 events tomorrow: Standup at 9:15 AM, 1:1 with Jordan at 11 AM, and Dentist at 4 PM.

  3. Hey Siri, add to my calendar.

    SiriWhat should I add to your calendar?

    Lunch with Sam Friday 1pm.

Answers are spoken in the voice and speed you pick, and shown beside the notch; hover it to read the whole answer. Prefer quiet? Turn speech off and they only show in the notch.

Everything you can say

  • Join my meeting
  • What’s my next meeting
  • What’s on my calendar today
  • What’s on my calendar tomorrow
  • When am I free
  • Copy my availability
  • Add to my calendar
  • Start focus
  • Stop focus
  • Show my clipboard
  • Hide my clipboard
  • Play or pause music
  • Next song
  • Open my shelf

It works through the Shortcuts app, on the Mac where NotchDesk is installed, and spoken answers are in English. You can rename any shortcut to say something else. How to set it up

New in 1.3

For power users

Script the notch, give your AI assistant your clipboard and calendar, and keep your history in step across your Macs. The automation server, URL actions and sync stay off until you turn them on.

  • notchdesk:// linksCall features from Shortcuts, Raycast or a Stream Deck: notchdesk://join, notchdesk://quickadd?text=…, notchdesk://month/today, notchdesk://privacy/curtain?on=1 and more.
  • A command-line toolInstall notchdesk to ~/.local/bin without an administrator password. Show progress beside the notch with notchdesk activity start build --progress 40%, search your clips or list upcoming events from your scripts.
  • An MCP server for AI assistantsLet Claude and other apps that support MCP search and add clips, read your upcoming events and show progress in the notch. It’s off by default, works only on your Mac, has a switch for each kind of access, and never gets the text of clips marked secret.
  • Sync between your MacsTurn it on, and text, links, code, colors and images up to 10 MB are shared between your Macs through your own iCloud Drive. Secret, expiring and file clips never leave the Mac they were copied on.

Your clipboard stays on your Mac

There’s no account and no analytics. Your history is kept in a folder on your Mac, and text recognition and secret detection run on your Mac too. It only goes further if you turn that on: iCloud sync copies it to your own iCloud Drive, and an AI assistant you connect through the automation server can read what you allow.

Stays on your Mac

  • Your clipboard history, including images and screenshots, in ~/Library/Application Support/NotchDesk.
  • Your calendar. Events are read from macOS Calendar to show them. NotchDesk never uploads them. Time to leave, if you turn it on, sends an event’s address to Apple Maps, and an AI assistant you connect can read upcoming events if you allow it.
  • Text recognition and secret detection. Both run on your Mac. OCR uses Apple’s Vision framework.
  • Your camera and your typing. The camera check and the Mirror tab are a live mirror that’s never recorded. Snippets match what you type on your Mac and never store it.
  • Screen captures and your downloads. Screen tools read text and QR codes on your Mac, and the Downloads alert works from file names and details without sending anything.
  • Meeting notes, Quick Notes, snippets, countdowns, the file shelf, your settings and license file.

Never recorded

  • Copies that password managers mark as concealed or temporary.
  • Anything copied in 1Password, Bitwarden, Apple Passwords, Keychain Access, Dashlane, LastPass, KeePassXC, Proton Pass or System Settings. They’re excluded by default, and you can edit the list.
  • Any other app you exclude.

You can pause capture, keep anywhere from 100 to 5,000 clips, and clear your history at any time.

Leaves your Mac

Out of the box, a few small requests, and none of them include your clips or your calendar.

  • live.dodopayments.comLicense activationWhen you activate your license, your license key and your Mac’s name go to Dodo Payments, which issued the key. After that the key is re-checked about once a week. Offline, NotchDesk keeps working.
  • notchdesk.com/version.jsonUpdate checkAbout once a day, NotchDesk fetches this small file to see whether a new version is out.
  • SpotifyCover artWhile Spotify is playing, NotchDesk downloads the album art Spotify links to, for Now Playing.

Only if you turn them on or use them

  • api.open-meteo.comWeatherYour approximate location, rounded to about 1 km, to get the forecast (or the city you type, to look it up). macOS looks up your place’s name with Apple.
  • Apple MapsTime to leaveYour location and the event’s address, to work out the travel time.
  • api.frankfurter.appExchange ratesOnly when you convert a currency in the calculator: your default currency’s code, to get the European Central Bank’s rates.
  • Your iCloud DriveSync between MacsYour clipboard history, minus secret, expiring and file clips, in a NotchDesk folder in your own iCloud Drive.
  • AI assistants you connectAutomation & MCPOnly what you allow (clips, events) goes to the assistant you connect, and from there to its provider. Secret clips never do.
Read the privacy policy

New in 1.3

Privacy tools

They look after your clipboard history for as long as you keep one.

  • Secrets, caught and clearedCard numbers, one-time codes, API keys and tokens, private keys and password-like text are masked everywhere and deleted after 10 minutes, or a delay you choose, unless you pin them. Detection is a careful guess, made on your Mac.
  • Mark it yourselfMark any clip as secret from its menu. If something is flagged by mistake, “Not a Secret” stops it being flagged again. NotchDesk remembers a fingerprint of it, never the text.
  • Retention rulesDelete clips automatically after a time you set for each type, or for everything copied from a particular app. Pinned and categorized clips and clips with reminders are always kept.
  • Storage meterSee how much space your history and its images take, with a count of each kind of clip. Delete images older than 30 days, or clear unpinned screenshots, in one step.
  • Privacy curtainTurns on by itself during video meetings (events with a Zoom, Meet, Teams or other call link), within a few seconds of the start, and hides clipboard contents on screen so sharing your screen doesn’t show them. You can still paste, and lift or lower the curtain any time.
  • Hide from screen captureOptionally keep NotchDesk’s windows out of screenshots and screen sharing. On macOS 15 and later some recording apps can still capture them, so the privacy curtain is the safer net.

Keyboard shortcuts

Thirteen global shortcuts work from any app. You can turn them off in Settings; , and share one switch. Quick Paste and the Month tab work without the mouse.

Calendar and meetings, from any app
Join the meeting in progress, or the next one starting soon
Copy the link of the current or next meeting
Quick add an event or a reminder
Copy your availability
Focus until your next meeting, or stop the session
Clipboard, from any app
Open Quick Paste over the app you’re using
Open the clipboard shelf in the notch
Open the Library
Paste what’s on the clipboard as plain text
Paste the next clip from the Paste Stack
Tools, from any app
Start a new Quick Note
Pick a color from anywhere on screen
Copy the text in an area of the screen
Keys inside Quick Paste and the Month tab
In Quick Paste
Move through your clips
Paste into the app you were using
Copy without pasting
–Paste one of the nine latest clips
Switch to the next type filter (⇧⇥ goes back)
Pin or unpin the clip
Delete the clip (when the search field is empty)
Close the panel
In the Month tab
Move by a day or a week
Previous or next month
Jump to today
Show or hide week numbers
Open the first event of the selected day
Close the event

⌘1–9 also work in the menu bar’s Clipboard tab. The Month tab’s keys work once you’ve clicked inside it, and ⌘N starts another note while Quick Notes is open. If another app already uses one of these shortcuts, turn ours off in Settings.