NotchNook vs Boring Notch (2026): Status and Price

Short answer: pick Boring Notch if you want free, and NotchNook if you want polish and its relaunch checks out. Boring Notch is free and open source, with media, calendar, reminders, an AirDrop shelf and HUDs, though macOS can’t verify it, so the first launch needs Open Anyway. NotchNook is regularly $25 once (or $3/month) and smoother, adding weather, Shortcuts and a to-do widget, but it went offline in September 2026 and went back on sale at a new site in October.

TL;DR

• Boring Notch: free, open source, good. Needs Open Anyway once on first launch.
• NotchNook: regularly $25 once or $3/month, the most polished, with weather and Shortcuts.
• Heads-up: NotchNook went offline in September 2026 during a dispute at its developer and relaunched at getnotchnook.com in October; check its status before buying.
• Battery: Boring Notch’s known idle drain was fixed in July 2025; check Activity Monitor anyway.
• Safe? Yes, from GitHub or Homebrew. The warning is about signing, not malware.

That is the verdict. The rest of this post is the reasoning, including the two questions people search most about Boring Notch (is it safe, and does it drain battery), so you can check it against your own priorities. New to notch apps? Start with how to get a notch island on Mac.

NotchNook vs Boring Notch at a glance

Checked 26 September 2026 against each app’s site, README and release notes; NotchNook’s price, trial, macOS version and status re-checked on 7 October 2026. Disclosure: we make FavShelf, a third option covered below.

Feature	NotchNook	Boring Notch
Price	Regularly $25 once or $3/month (48-hour trial)	Free, open source (GPL-3.0)
Media controls	✅ polished	✅ with visualizer
File shelf / AirDrop	✅	✅
Calendar	✅	✅ plus Reminders
Weather	✅	❌ (on its roadmap)
Camera mirror	✅	✅
Volume / brightness HUDs	✅ (since 1.6)	✅
Shortcuts, timers, to-do	✅	❌
AI features	❌	❌
Source code	Closed	Open, you can read it
Notarized	Not verified by us	❌ needs Open Anyway once
Works without a notch	✅ floating bar	✅ floating bar
macOS	14.6+	14+

Both apps do the same fundamental trick: hover the camera housing and black glass blooms open into a panel. Neither renders under the physical notch, because that’s where the camera is; they make the space around it useful.

What does NotchNook actually do?

NotchNook popularized this category, and it still feels like the reference implementation. The core is media: now playing with artwork and transport controls in an expandable island. Around that it adds a file tray (drag something to the notch, keep it there or AirDrop it), a calendar, weather, a camera mirror, and a Shortcuts widget. Version 1.6 added system HUDs, timers and a to-do widget.

The word for NotchNook is polished. Animations are smooth, the expand/collapse feels native, and nothing looks half-finished. If you show someone a notch app and want them to say “oh, that’s like the iPhone,” NotchNook is the demo.

The honest caveats:

• It isn’t free. After the trial it’s regularly $25 once (up to 5 Macs) or $3/month. The one-time price is the better deal if you keep it more than eight months.
• Closed source, and a developer in dispute. You’re trusting the developer, lo.cafe, rather than code you can read, and lo.cafe is in an ownership dispute (see the next section).
• No AI or clipboard. If you want the notch to hold clipboard history or AI usage, look at Notchy or FavShelf instead.

Is NotchNook worth it, and is it free?

It isn’t free: getnotchnook.com lists it at regularly $25 once or $3 a month, with a 48-hour trial. In September 2026 it went offline during an ownership dispute at lo.cafe (MacMagazine, 16 September), and on 7 October it was back on sale at that new site; we couldn’t confirm who runs it or whether licences bought before September still work. Full status: FavTray vs NotchNook.

Is Boring Notch any good?

Setup, Gatekeeper and versions: Boring Notch for Mac. Feature by feature against FavShelf: FavTray vs Boring Notch.

Yes. Boring Notch is the community option: free, open source, and more capable than its name suggests. Its README lists media controls with a visualizer, calendar and Reminders integration, a file shelf with AirDrop, a camera mirror for a quick hair check before a call, a charging indicator, and replacements for the volume and brightness HUDs.

The strengths:

• The price is unbeatable. Free, no trial timer, no nag screens, no paid tier.
• The code is public. If you care what runs on your machine, what it phones home to and how it handles your data, you can go read it.
• The project is active. The repository was getting commits in late September 2026, and a 2.8 release candidate shipped on 25 September.

The weaknesses:

• Unsigned. macOS blocks it on first launch until you allow it with Open Anyway (details below).
• No weather or AI. Weather is on its roadmap but not shipped.
• Rough edges on multi-display setups. If you regularly dock into external monitors, expect occasional glitches.
• Open-source polish. It’s good, but it isn’t NotchNook-smooth.

Is Boring Notch safe?

Yes, as long as you get it from the source. Boring Notch is open source under GPL-3.0, so anyone can inspect exactly what it does, and it’s one of the most-starred notch apps on GitHub. Download it from the project’s GitHub releases page or install it with Homebrew; avoid download mirrors that repackage it.

What trips people up is the warning. Gatekeeper can’t verify Boring Notch: we checked both the current release (2.7.3) and the 2.8 release candidate on 26 September 2026, and Gatekeeper rejects both because they’re signed with a development certificate rather than a Developer ID. The project says it doesn’t have a paid Apple Developer account yet. So macOS says the app is from an unidentified developer. Try to open it once, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway; do this only for a copy from the official GitHub releases page. The warning is about code signing, not malware. It does mean you’re trusting the build without Apple’s malware scan, which is the trade you make for free, open-source software distributed this way. Like every notch app, it will also ask for permissions such as media and calendar access; grant only what the features you use need (which permission does what).

Does Boring Notch drain battery?

It has, for some users, and it’s been fixed more than once. The best-known report is GitHub issue #338, opened in January 2025: an M4 MacBook Pro losing about 5% of battery an hour at idle with Boring Notch running, and others confirming it. The maintainers shipped a fix in July 2025, one of the affected users confirmed the idle drain was gone, and the issue was closed. The 2.8 release candidate (25 September 2026) lists another fix, for “performance issues causing high CPU utilization for some users”.

So the honest answer for 2026: a current build shouldn’t drain your battery, but it’s worth checking on your own Mac, especially with the music visualizer on. Run Boring Notch for an hour of normal work, then open Activity Monitor: the Energy tab shows its impact and the CPU tab its load. A well-built notch app should idle near 0% CPU when the island is closed. If you see sustained load, try turning off the visualizer, or update to the newest build. The same check works for NotchNook, which we haven’t seen misbehave.

Which should you choose: NotchNook or Boring Notch?

Work through these in order:

1. Do you mostly want media controls in the notch? Boring Notch. It does the core job for free, and you can stop reading here.
2. Do you want weather, Shortcuts, timers and a to-do list as well? NotchNook, once you’ve confirmed the relaunch works for you. That’s where the $25 buys something real.
3. Do you care about open source? Boring Notch, no contest.
4. Do you want to skip the Gatekeeper Open Anyway step? NotchNook, or a notarized free option such as Notchy.
5. Do you demo your Mac to other people? NotchNook, once you’ve confirmed the relaunch works for you. It is the prettiest.

The practical advice: install Boring Notch first. It’s free, so the cost of finding out whether you even like notch apps is zero. If you find yourself wishing it had weather, Shortcuts or smoother animations, that’s your signal NotchNook is worth $25. If Boring Notch quietly covers everything you need, you just saved $25.

Is there a third option worth considering?

A few. The free notch apps roundup covers the $0 ones in detail; here are the short versions.

Notchy is free, donation-supported and notarized, and runs back to macOS 13. It covers media with synced lyrics, a shelf, clipboard history, calendar, weather, HUDs and AI usage limits. See FavTray vs Notchy for a side-by-side.

Alcove vs Boring Notch

Alcove ($14.99 once) is the minimal, paid take: now playing with a visualizer, volume and brightness HUDs, battery alerts, a calendar glance, notifications and Lock Screen widgets. Compared with Boring Notch it has no file shelf or camera mirror, but it’s notarized (we checked version 1.7.7) and feels more finished. Pick Alcove if you want tasteful HUDs with no setup friction; pick Boring Notch if you want more features for free. Side by side: FavTray vs Alcove.

FavShelf, part of FavTray, splits the difference on pricing. Disclosure: FavShelf is our app. The island glance is free on every install: now playing with transport and seek for Spotify and Apple Music (artwork for Spotify), live weather, Claude and Codex usage bars, and volume and power HUDs. FavTray Pro adds clipboard history, a file shelf with AirDrop, a day calendar with Join, a camera check including iPhone Continuity Camera, island notifications and Claude Code approvals (pricing). It runs on macOS 14+, works without a notch as a small glass pill, and we measured the whole app at 0.3–0.5% idle CPU on FavTray 1.11.0.

For the full comparison, with every notch app we could verify side by side, see our Mac notch apps guide.

The bottom line

NotchNook and Boring Notch are both good software solving the same small, satisfying problem: Apple shipped a notch in 2021 and never made it do anything. Boring Notch is the right default: free, open source, and it covers media, calendar and a shelf well. NotchNook is the right upgrade if weather, Shortcuts and polish are worth $25 once to you and its relaunch has settled, and you should decide that after trying the free option, not before.

And whichever you pick, remember the ceiling every notch app shares: none can draw under the camera housing itself. If your real frustration is menu bar icons vanishing behind the notch, that’s a different problem with a different fix.

Sources (checked 7 October 2026): MacMagazine on NotchNook, Homebrew’s notchnook cask, getnotchnook.com, Boring Notch on GitHub.