The notch Windows never had.

A small black pill at the top of your screen that grows to show what is happening: music, volume, timers, and your coding agents.

Download for Windows View source
Free and open source. Windows 10 2004 or later, Windows 11 recommended.

Hover the pill above to hold it open. These are the real themes, drawn by the real app.

Features

What it does

Always on top, never takes focus, and gets out of the way of fullscreen games.

Media

Whatever is playing shows with its artwork, with play/pause, skip and click-to-seek when expanded.

System HUDs

Volume, audio output, brightness, charger, low battery, Bluetooth and Caps Lock.

Shelf

Drag files onto the pill to put them aside, then drag them out into any app or folder.

Terminal for Claude Code, Codex and opencode

A real terminal in the notch. The pill shows whether an agent is working, needs input, or is done.

Agents anywhere

Claude Code, Codex, opencode, Gemini CLI and Aider are found wherever they run. Click one to bring its window forward.

Command palette

One hotkey and a search box: start a timer, jump to a tab or an agent, open a terminal, switch a plugin on.

Clipboard history

Optional. Search, pin and copy again. Kept in memory, and password managers' copies are never kept.

Scriptable

notch:// links, a notchctl command and a local webhook let scripts and CI show things in the pill.

Widgets

Timer with Pomodoro mode, .ics events, and live CPU, memory, GPU, network and battery stats.

Notch or island

Grow out of the screen edge or float as a Dynamic Island, at the top or in the taskbar.

Themes

Dark, light or follow Windows, with your own accent colour. Plugins add whole new looks.

Themes

Make it yours

Dark and light are built in. Theme plugins restyle every surface, font and corner. Every picture below is the real app, rendered with each theme.

Built in
Plugins
Inside

Hover, and it opens

Home has what is playing, a timer and your calendar; Stats shows the machine; the Shelf holds files for later.

The Home tab with media controls, a timer and a calendar
The Stats tab with CPU, memory, GPU, network and battery
The Shelf tab holding five files and folders
The Home tab listing three coding agents with their state and where they run
The command palette showing timers for the search tim
The Clipboard tab with copied text and files, one of them pinned
Glow

Glow that means something

The pill lights up in a colour and rhythm that matches the moment.

An agent is working
An agent needs you
It is done
Volume
Charger connected
Bluetooth device
Low battery
Caps Lock
Music, in the artwork's colour
Install

Up in a minute

  1. Download Notch-Setup-<version>.exe from the latest release.
  2. Run it. It installs for your user, with no admin rights.
  3. The installer is not code-signed, so SmartScreen will ask you to confirm.

Installed copies check this repository's releases and tell you when a newer one is ready; you install it from Settings when you choose. The notices can be turned off.

Plugins

Add your own activities, cards and themes

Small .NET libraries can add their own activities to the pill, cards to a Plugins tab, and whole themes. Press Install on the list: Notch opens, shows what the plugin is, and installs it only if you say yes. Or type a GitHub repository into the Plugins box in Settings.

Browse plugins Plugin guide