Privacy

n0tch has no account, no analytics and no tracking. Almost everything it does happens on your Mac. This page says exactly what it reads, what leaves your Mac, and what it keeps.

The short version

No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising.
n0tch makes two kinds of network request, both optional: a once-a-day check for a newer version, and an album cover lookup (see below).
This website uses no cookies and no analytics either.

What n0tch reads on your Mac

These stay on your Mac. n0tch does not upload them anywhere.

What	Why
What is playing: title, artist, album, cover, progress, the app playing it	To draw the now-playing card and the lock screen record. Read from the Mac's own media controls.
Volume, brightness, battery and power state	For the lines around the notch and the battery warnings.
The volume and brightness keys, and two-finger scrolling while the cursor is over the notch	To handle them in place of the system pop-up. This uses the Accessibility permission. n0tch does not see or record any other keys or typing.
Names, sizes and progress of files in your Downloads folder	To show download progress. File contents are never read.
Your current Focus mode (its name and icon only)	To show a Focus indicator. n0tch does not read notifications, senders or allowed apps.
System audio levels (only if you turn on Real audio spectrum)	To make the level meter move with the sound. Only levels are measured; audio is never recorded or stored. macOS asks your permission first.

If you tap the heart in Apple Music, n0tch asks the Music app to favorite the current song. macOS asks you to allow that.

What leaves your Mac

Update checks. Once a day, n0tch asks GitHub for the newest release of n0tch, the same list anyone can open on the releases page. The request carries the app name and version (as a standard user-agent) and nothing else: no identifier, account or information about your Mac. When you choose to update, it downloads the new version from the same GitHub page. You can turn the daily check off in Settings → About → Check for updates automatically; then n0tch never contacts GitHub unless you press Check Now.

Album covers. Only sometimes: when your player does not provide a cover, n0tch asks Apple's public iTunes search for one, sending the song title and artist. Apple's own privacy policy applies to that request. No other information is sent, and nothing is sent when a cover is already available.

You can turn it off in Settings → Now Playing → Look up missing album covers online. n0tch then shows a placeholder instead.

What n0tch keeps

Settings, in the standard macOS preferences for n0tch.
The shelf. Files, images, links and text you drop on the notch are copied to ~/Library/Application Support/n0tch/shelf. They are deleted after an hour unless you pin them. Pinned items stay until you remove them.
A local control socket in the same folder, used by the n0tch command and hooks. It is private to your user account.

n0tch does not keep a history of what you played, downloaded or did.

Questions

Open an issue at github.com/alvinyeboah/n0tch. Please do not include private information.

Last updated 4 November 2026 for n0tch 0.1.1.