Put the MacBook notch to work

On its own, the MacBook notch holds the camera and nothing else, and its main effect on your day is hiding menu bar icons that no longer fit beside it. You can fix that in a few minutes by reordering and trimming the menu bar, and you can rescue apps that draw under the camera with one checkbox in Get Info. To make the space itself useful, a notch app gives it a job: Inkling turns it into a place for notes that opens with a hover or Option-N.

What the notch does by default

The notch is the cutout at the top center of the screen on recent MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models. It holds the camera and the green light that shows when the camera is on. macOS treats the strip on either side of it as the menu bar: app menus run along the left, and status icons such as Wi-Fi, battery, Control Center and the clock sit on the right.

Nothing is drawn inside the notch itself. In full screen, macOS keeps the app below the camera and fills the strip beside it with black, and the menu bar shows up there when you move the pointer to the top of the screen.

So the notch takes a slice of the menu bar and gives nothing back. Both halves of that can be improved: you can stop it from costing you icons, and you can give the space a use.

Stop the notch from hiding menu bar icons

The space to the right of the notch is fixed. When there are more status icons than fit, macOS hides the extras rather than squeezing them, and it does not tell you. An icon from an app you installed last week can simply not be there, even though the app is running. The squeeze is worst when the app in front has a long row of menus, since those menus take their space first.

Three changes win the space back:

1. Put the icons you use on the right. Hold Command and drag an icon along the menu bar to move it. Icons are hidden from the left end first, so the end nearest the clock is where your most used ones belong.
2. Remove system icons you never click. Hold Command and drag a system icon down off the menu bar to remove it. You can also open System Settings and use the section that controls menu bar items (Control Center, on macOS Sonoma and Sequoia), where each one can be set to show or not.
3. Turn off icons in each app’s own settings. Many apps that add a menu bar icon have a setting to hide it. If you only ever open an app from the Dock or Spotlight, its icon is taking space for nothing.

To check the result, bring the app with the most menus you use to the front and look at what is still visible on the right. If the icons you care about survive that, they will survive everything else.

Fix apps that draw under the camera

Most apps handle the notch without help. A few, often older apps and games, put buttons or text in the area the camera covers, especially in full screen. macOS has a per-app setting for this:

1. Quit the app.
2. In Finder, open the Applications folder and select the app.
3. Choose File, then Get Info.
4. Turn on Scale to fit below built-in camera.

The next time it opens, the app uses only the part of the screen below the notch. The setting belongs to that one app, so nothing else changes. If the app looks worse, open Get Info again and switch it off.

What a notch app can do with the space

Once the menu bar is tidy, the notch is still a black shape at the top of the screen. That position has real strengths for one kind of job:

• It is always in the same place. On any screen, in any app, the top center is the top center. Your hand learns where it is.
• The pointer gets there fast. The top edge of the screen stops the pointer, so you can push it upward without aiming.
• It sits outside your windows. Something that drops down from the notch covers your work for a moment instead of rearranging it.

Those strengths suit things you need for a few seconds and then want out of the way. Apps in this category put different things up there, from playback controls to a place to drop files. A note is one of the best fits, because a thought arrives at a bad moment, takes seconds to write down, and should not cost you the window you were working in.

Notes in the notch

Inkling is a notes app that lives in the notch. Hover over the notch or press Option-N from any app, and a note opens beneath it. Write, press Command-Return, and the note tucks back away. Ink, a pair of eyes that lives in the notch, gives a nod so you know it went in. Come back later and the same note is waiting.

The notes are more than a text box. They can hold headings, checkboxes, links, highlights, quotes, code and tables, and you can start one from a template: daily scratchpad, meeting, project or journal. You can pin notes, search for a phrase across all of them, follow tags and links between notes, and go back to a previous version of a note.

A few details matter for something that sits at the top of your screen all day:

• Ink can be as quiet as you like. Its mood can be Lively, Calm or Still. If moving eyes at the edge of your vision pull your attention, choose Still.
• It can match your setup. There are two themes, Night and Paper, and five accent colors.
• The shortcuts are yours. Option-N and Command-Return can both be changed in Settings.
• It follows you to a desk monitor. On a display without a notch, it shows a virtual notch in the same place, so the habit carries over.

Notes are stored on the Mac, and writing and searching work offline. iCloud sync between your Macs is optional, goes through your own private iCloud, and is off by default. There is no account to create.

What it will not do

This app uses the notch for notes. If what you want up there is playback controls or a file shelf, that is a different kind of notch app. Within notes, it is a personal tool: there is no sharing or collaboration, no iPhone or iPad app, and no AI features. It needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.

Inkling costs $12 once, with 24 hours free and no card needed, and one license covers up to 3 Macs. If you do not buy after the trial, every note stays readable, searchable, copyable and exportable; a license is what unlocks writing and editing.

Questions

Do I need a MacBook with a notch? No. On displays without one, the app shows a virtual notch, so it works on an external monitor or on a Mac without a notch, as long as it runs macOS 14 Sonoma or later.

Where do menu bar icons go when the notch hides them? Nowhere. The app behind the icon keeps running; the icon just has no room. Reorder or remove other icons and it comes back.

Does Scale to fit below built-in camera affect other apps? No. It is set per app, in that app’s Get Info window, and only that app changes.