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Notchly’s panel is a borderless, floating NSPanel that sits directly below the physical notch area of your MacBook’s built-in display. It has no title bar or window chrome — it appears and disappears in place, anchored to the top of the screen, so your Claude sessions are always one cursor-move or keypress away without disrupting whatever else you are working on.

Opening the panel

There are three ways to reveal the Notchly panel:
1

Hover over the notch

Move your cursor to the top-center of your screen. A 15-pixel margin around the notch area triggers the reveal. The panel appears immediately below the notch.
2

Click the menu bar icon

Click the Notchly icon in the menu bar. The panel opens anchored below the status item.
3

Press the global hotkey

Press the backtick key (`) from any app. Notchly intercepts this key globally (keyCode 50) and toggles the panel open or closed.

Auto-hide behavior

How the panel hides depends on how you opened it. Opened via hover: the panel monitors your cursor position in real time. Once your cursor leaves both the notch area and the panel — with a 60 ms grace delay — the panel hides automatically. This means a brief accidental crossing won’t flash the panel at you; you need to genuinely move away before it closes. Opened via menu bar icon or hotkey: the panel stays open until you press the hotkey again, click away from the panel, or the panel loses key status. Hover-away logic does not apply. In both cases, the panel will not hide while a dialog (rename, restore confirmation, sleep-others prompt) is open.

Pin option

To keep the panel open permanently regardless of cursor position:
  • Click the pin icon in the panel’s top-left corner, or
  • Click the Notchly menu bar icon → Show in Notch (toggle on)
When pinned, the auto-hide timer never fires and clicking away does not dismiss the panel. The pinned state persists across restarts.

Notch pill and status indicator

The notch area always shows a pill-shaped status indicator even when the panel is closed. It changes size and content to reflect what Claude is doing across all open sessions:
The pill sits at its compact resting size (~100 px wide), matching the physical notch dimensions detected from NSScreen.auxiliaryTopLeftArea and auxiliaryTopRightArea. A small animated bot face is centered inside it. No session is working.
When more than one session is demanding attention — working, waiting, or just completed — a count badge appears next to the status icon inside the pill so you can tell at a glance how many sessions need you. The menu bar icon shows a numeric badge next to it equal to the number of sessions currently in the working state. The badge clears as soon as all sessions go idle. This lets you monitor background Claude runs without opening the panel at all.

Displays without a notch

On Macs without a physical notch (or when connected to an external display), Notchly adjusts gracefully:
  • The pill shrinks to a compact ~100 px status bar that hugs its content rather than spanning a wide gap. The bot face and status icons remain visible.
  • Hover detection is calibrated to the visible menu bar height so it does not interfere with normal cursor movement.
  • The panel itself still opens and functions normally; only the pill geometry changes.
Notch hover detection only works on the built-in display. Moving your cursor to the top-center of an external monitor will not trigger the reveal. Use the menu bar icon or the backtick hotkey instead when working on an external screen.

Panel position and resizing

The panel is always centered horizontally on the built-in display. When it opens near a menu bar icon that is close to the right screen edge, Notchly clamps the panel position so it stays fully within the visible screen area — the tabs and side buttons remain reachable. Dragging the panel’s resize handle grows it symmetrically from both sides, keeping it centered under the notch. The panel size (width and height) is saved to UserDefaults and restored on the next launch.

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