NotchTerm

A terminal that lives in your notch. Hover your mouse over the MacBook notch and a terminal drops down. Move away and it hides. Your shell keeps running the whole time.

No Dock icon, no keyboard shortcut to remember, no window management — just a flick of the wrist.

• Website & docs: https://ysftrn.github.io/NotchTerm/
• Download: Releases

Features

• Hover to show, hover-off to hide — the shell session persists across show/hide
• Tabs — Cmd+T for a new tab, tab strip appears only when you have 2+ (position configurable: top or bottom)
• 25 built-in themes with full ANSI palettes — Catppuccin, Dracula, Gruvbox, Nord, Rose Pine, Solarized, Tokyo Night, and more
• Works on every screen — real notch on MacBooks, a "phantom notch" (top-center hover zone) on external monitors and non-notch Macs
• Plain-text config with live reload — edit, save, applied instantly
• TUI-friendly — vim, htop, less all work; Escape reaches the terminal
• Any shell — zsh, bash, fish, whatever $SHELL says (or override in config)
• Bundled Nerd Font (MesloLGS) — prompt glyphs work out of the box

Why not a notch hub?

Most notch apps are hubs — media controls, file shelves, HUD replacements, calendars. NotchTerm deliberately isn't one. It does exactly one thing: puts a real terminal (SwiftTerm — a genuine PTY running your actual shell, not a widget) under your notch. No Dock icon, no feature drawer, no subscription, and nothing to configure that doesn't fit in one small text file.

If you live in a shell, this is the fastest path to one that exists on a Mac. If you don't, the hub apps will serve you better — and that's fine.

Install

Download (recommended)

1. Grab NotchTerm.zip from the latest release and unzip it.
2. Move NotchTerm.app to /Applications.
3. NotchTerm is not notarized yet (indie app, no Apple Developer subscription — it's on the roadmap). macOS will block the first launch, so clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/NotchTerm.app

Or: try to open it once, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

4. On first launch, grant Accessibility access when prompted. NotchTerm needs it to see mouse movement over the notch while other apps are focused. It does not log keystrokes, read screen content, or send anything anywhere — the code is right here to check.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/ysftrn/NotchTerm.git
cd NotchTerm
xcodebuild -project NotchTerm.xcodeproj -scheme NotchTerm -configuration Release build

Requires Xcode 15+ and macOS 13+.

Usage

Hover the notch (or the top-center of any screen's menu bar). That's it.

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+T	New tab
Cmd+W	Close tab (hides panel on the last tab)
Cmd+1–9	Jump to tab
Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Next / previous tab
Cmd+K	Clear terminal
Cmd+C / Cmd+V	Copy / paste
Cmd+,	Open config file
Cmd+R	Reload config (edits auto-apply on save anyway)
Cmd+Q	Quit

Typing exit (or Ctrl+D) closes the current tab; the last tab restarts its shell instead. Drag any edge of the panel to resize — it stays centered under the notch.

Configuration

Everything lives in ~/.config/notchterm/notchterm.conf — open it with Cmd+,. Changes apply the moment you save.

font-family = MesloLGSNerdFont-Regular
font-size = 13              # points, 8–36

theme = Default             # see the theme list below
opacity = 1.0               # 0.1 – 1.0
cursor-style = block        # block | underline | bar
cursor-blink = false        # true | false

shell = /bin/zsh            # full path to the shell executable
scrollback = 10000          # lines kept in history (min 100)

width = 1000                # points (min 300)
height = 400                # points; 0 = 40% of screen height
terminal-padding = 0        # inner inset, 0–40
notch-gap = 0               # gap below the notch, 0–50
tab-position = bottom       # tab bar edge: top | bottom

Themes

Default, Ayu, Ayu Mirage, Catppuccin Frappe, Catppuccin Latte, Catppuccin Macchiato, Catppuccin Mocha, Dracula, Everforest Dark, GitHub Dark, GitHub Light, Gruvbox Dark, Gruvbox Light, Monokai, Nord, One Dark, One Light, Rose Pine, Rose Pine Dawn, Rose Pine Moon, Snazzy, Solarized Dark, Solarized Light, Tokyo Night, Tokyo Night Storm

All themes include complete 16-color ANSI palettes plus matching cursor and selection colors.

Requirements

• macOS 13 (Ventura) or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel
• A notch is not required — non-notch screens get a phantom hover zone at the top-center

Privacy

NotchTerm runs entirely on your machine and does not log, record, or transmit any user information — ever. No keystroke logging, no screen recording, no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no network calls, no account. The Accessibility permission is used solely to observe the mouse position for the hover trigger, and everything the app does is auditable in this repository.

Credits

• SwiftTerm by Miguel de Icaza — the terminal engine (MIT)
• Theme palettes collected from iTerm2-Color-Schemes
• MesloLGS Nerd Font (Apache 2.0 / OFL)
• Theme designs by their respective authors: Catppuccin, Dracula, Gruvbox, Nord, Rose Pine, Solarized, Tokyo Night, and others — thank you

License

MIT © Yusuf Torun