The all new MacBook Air with M2 and MacBook Pro 14″ and 16″ with M1 Pro and M1 Max processors are impressive machines by most hardware standards, but not everyone is impressed with the Notch that takes up a portion at the top of the screen. The Notch holds the front facing camera, and dips down into the top of the display. So, what if you hate the way the notch looks? Are you stuck with it? Not entirely.
Fortunately for notch haters, there’s an app called TopNotch that hides the display notch, using a simple but ingenious method of turning the menu bar black to match the notch. This effectively makes The Notch blend into the menu bar, making it much more subtle.
TopNotch is completely free to download and runs quietly in the background, and updates itself when the wallpaper changes. It even adjusts with Dynamic Desktops if you’re using those.
Just run the app and your display notch will fall into the black menubar, serving as camouflage of sorts.
Here’s how your menubar and Notch will look with TopNotch running, where it is quite hidden:
And here’s how the menubar and Notch looks by default, which is quite visible:
This app is ingenious enough that it kind of makes you wonder why Apple didn’t make the menubar completely black again to hide The Notch, but for now the menubar remains transparent (for some MacOS history, the menubar was once black as a prequel to full dark mode). But then again, similar apps and notch hiding wallpapers existed for the notch model iPhone, before most people just gave up and got used to it.
The display Notch, which is a bit of an eyesore, will likely fade to being irrelevant for most users as they get accustomed to the new MacBook Pro, similar to how users adjusted to the notch on newer iPhone models. It’s pretty clear at this point that The Notch has become a bit of a hallmark of modern Apple design, and there are even rumors that it will be included with future redesigned MacBook computers too. So if you hate The Notch, it’s time to get comfortable with it, it’s clearly going to be around a while.
Are you hiding The Notch on your new MacBook Air/Pro with TopNotch? Do you not care about The Notch? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments.
