FavTray vs Notchy
Notchy is a free, donation-supported notch app that lists 74 features and runs back to macOS 13. FavTray is a developer dashboard — a notch island plus eye rest, water and stand-up reminders, AI cost tracking, meetings, ports, and coding-agent approvals — for a one-time $4.99. Here's the honest side-by-side, including why the feature counts don't mean what they look like.
What FavTray's notch does that a media island doesn't
Feature comparison
| Feature | FavTray | Notchy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free tier; Lifetime $4.99 once | Free, donation-supported |
| How it's funded | Paid plans — one person, full time | Optional coffee donations |
| Feature count (as marketed) | Counted by tool (FavTray 1.11 came to 179 functions counted Notchy's way) | “74 features” (7 Oct 2026) |
| macOS support | macOS 14 Sonoma and later | macOS 13 Ventura and later |
| Notch island | FavShelf: now playing, a day calendar (Time tab), clipboard history, file shelf + AirDrop, weather, camera check, Agents page | Media, lyrics, shelf, HUDs, clipboard, timers, widgets, and more |
| Notch notifications | FavTray's own alerts as notch cards (Pro): Claude Code requests, questions and finished/waiting, Claude/Codex limits, meetings, CI results on your PRs, busy ports, water and stand-up asks | HUDs, call and message islands, download alerts; a Notification Mirror that needs Full Disk Access |
| Body & desk health | Eye Rest (20-20-20, Pomodoro; body breaks with Pro), Hydrate (water tank on the Side Dock), Posture (stand-up shrimp) | Pomodoro timer, keep awake |
| AI usage tracking | 30 providers, session/weekly limits, 30-day cost history, signed-in account shown, time-to-limit forecast | AI usage tracker (60+ providers listed) |
| Coding-agent control | Agent Sessions: watch Claude Code and Codex; approve, deny and answer Claude Code from the notch (Pro), over a local socket | Claude Code Allow/Deny from the notch; Codex activity through hooks |
| Window management | Snap: halves, quarters, thirds, maximise, centre, drag-to-edge, restore | Window snapping |
| Meetings & calendar | Meetings (full-screen alert, one-click Join), Reminders (full-screen), a TimeLens day calendar in the island | Calendar widget, Apple Reminders |
| Cloud & infra | AWS and Google Cloud billing, Ports (10 kills a day free), GitHub PRs and CI, System | Listening ports with kill, GitHub PRs, system stats |
| Writing | AI Writer: floating toolbar in any app, on your own AI provider, 10 rewrites a day free | Text snippets, OCR |
| Privacy | No FavTray server stores your data; no account, no telemetry; credentials in Keychain | No account, no telemetry (as stated) |
| Open source | No | No |
| Support & roadmap | Paid support, public changelog, 7-day full trial | Community / donations |
Notchy details are as published on notchy.dev on 2026-10-07 (this page is about Notchy from notchy.dev, not notchy.io or the open-source Claude Code terminal app also called Notchy). FavTray details reflect version 2.0.8.
The verdict
Pick Notchy if you want a free notch app on a Ventura Mac and your wish list is media, HUDs, a shelf, a clipboard and timers. It does that well for $0, and asking for coffee instead of a subscription is a fair deal.
Pick FavTray if the notch is where you want your whole desk to report in: an eye-rest timer that knows you're in a meeting, a water tank and a stand-up shrimp on the edge of the screen that cheer in the notch, Claude and Codex limits as one line and a bar, coding-agent approvals from the island, and meetings, ports, cloud costs and GitHub in the same icon. That breadth is why it's a paid product, and why there's a lifetime price — one person builds it full time, and you can pay once and stop thinking about it.
On the count: 74 features against a shorter list of tools is a counting convention, not a gap. We show our work in how notch apps count tools.
Frequently asked questions
Is Notchy a good FavTray alternative?
For the notch itself, yes — Notchy is a capable, free notch app for the Mac with media, a shelf, HUDs, a clipboard, and timers, and it runs back to macOS 13. It is a strong pick if your whole wish list lives in the notch and you're on Ventura. FavTray is a different shape: the island is one tool among many, next to eye rest, water and stand-up reminders, AI cost tracking, meetings, window management, port kill, and coding-agent approvals — with a free tier and a one-time Lifetime option (approvals are Pro).
Notchy's FavTray page lists a monthly plan. Is that right?
No. FavTray has no subscription: a free tier, or a one-time Lifetime licence ($4.99), with a 7-day full trial that needs no card or account. Notchy's page also says FavTray has no AI usage tracker and no clipboard history; it has both (the tracker is free, clipboard history in the island is Pro).
Notchy has 74 features. Is Notchy bigger than FavTray?
They're counted differently. Notchy counts each function — Caps Lock HUD, Zip & Unzip, Drive Eject — as a feature. FavTray counts tools; one tool like Eye Rest contains a dozen functions (20-20-20 timer, six presets, Pomodoro, body-break exercises, meeting and typing detection, office hours, stats). Counted Notchy's way, FavTray 1.11 came to 179, and every one is listed in our full feature list so you can check.
Which one is free?
Notchy is free and asks for donations. FavTray has a free tier that opens every tool — Eye Rest, AI Usage, System and Menu Bar with no limit; the island glance with media, weather and AI bars; Hydrate and Posture reminders; and Ports, Snap, Keep Alive, Screenshot, Meetings and more with daily limits — plus a 7-day unlimited trial. Pro removes every limit for $4.99 once.
Which is lighter on the Mac?
Both are native Swift apps. Notchy states 0.1 % idle CPU. We measured FavTray 1.11.0 on an M5 Max with every tool enabled and the island collapsed: 0.3–0.5 % CPU sampled over 30 seconds and 179 MB resident memory, on a debug build. The island itself follows a no-perpetual-animation rule — when it's closed it only redraws once a minute. Numbers and method are in our performance post.
Does either work on a Mac without a notch?
Yes. Notchy floats its island as a pill, and FavShelf shows a small glass pill at the top of the main display. FavTray's side-dock tools (Hydrate, Posture) live on the screen edge and don't depend on the notch at all.
More: FavTray alternatives compared · Notchy alternatives · FavTray's idle CPU and memory, measured