Music from any app
Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube in the browser: Island reads the system's now playing, with artwork, synced lyrics, seek bar and a visualizer driven by the real audio.
Island
The MacBook notch, turned into a live surface. Island shows the song playing in any app, your AirPods battery, the next meeting and what you just copied, then gets out of the way. I built it as a lighter, open alternative to paid notch apps.
Download Island 2.2
How to install
3.0 MB · macOS 14 or later · the app is in Italian
6pages in the notch: music, shelf, clipboard, calendar, stats, controls
0data sent anywhere: everything stays on the Mac
3.0 MBdownload, universal for Apple Silicon and Intel
The notch is dead space.
On a MacBook the notch takes a slice of the menu bar and gives nothing back. Notch apps fix that, but the good ones are paid, closed, and ask for broad access to the Mac. I wanted one I could read line by line.
One pill, many jobs.
Your day at a glance
Next events with a one-click Join for Meet, Zoom and Teams, today's reminders you can tick off, and a heads-up five minutes before a meeting.
On the lock screen too
Like on the iPhone: the whole lock screen takes the album artwork, in high resolution, with a tall cover, a small glass player, battery and the next event.
Small things, always one hover away.
AirPods card
3D earbuds that spin in, with left, right and case battery when your AirPods connect.
Shelf and AirDrop
Drop files on the notch, pick them up later or send them with AirDrop.
Clipboard and notes
The last 25 things you copied, a colour picker, and a quick note that stays.
Volume per app
Turn Chrome down without touching Spotify.
Equalizer
Five bands with vertical sliders and presets, for the whole Mac or a single app.
System stats
CPU, memory, disk and network, sampled only while you look.
Control centre
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, dark mode, keep awake, timers, brightness and volume.
Live alerts
Unlock animation, volume, brightness, keyboard light, Caps Lock, Focus, mic and camera in use, screen recording, network.
Liquid Glass
Black, glass or tinted by the artwork, glass settings too. Compact or large, fast or soft animations, pick your music app.
Four rules behind the app.
- Ask for permissions only when needed. Calendar, camera and downloads ask the first time you open that feature, never at launch. Without them, Island still works.
- Never leave the Mac silent. The equalizer and per-app volume reroute audio. If no sound arrives while an app is playing, they switch themselves off and say so in the notch.
- Nothing leaves the Mac. No account, no analytics. The only network calls are the weather and the song lyrics, and the clipboard history lives in memory only.
- Open source. Parts are adapted from Atoll and boring.notch, two open source notch apps, so Island is released under the same GPL-3.0 licence, with its source code below.
Install it in a minute.
How to install
Island is free and not signed with a paid Apple certificate, so macOS asks you to confirm it once.
- Open Island-2.2.dmg and drag Island into Applications.
- Open Island. macOS says it can't verify the developer: press Done.
- Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and press Open Anyway.
- Hover the notch. Settings are in the menu bar icon, or right-click the island.
If macOS says the app is damaged, run this once in Terminal, then open it again: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Island.app
Files
Version 2.2. The interface is in Italian.
Island-2.2.dmgApp for macOS 14+, Apple Silicon and Intel3.0 MB ↓
Source codeSwift sources, build scripts, licence3.9 MB ↓
Check the download
Before opening it, you can make sure the file is exactly the one published here. In Terminal, in the folder where you saved it:
shasum -a 256 Island-2.2.dmg
The result must be identical to this fingerprint. If even one character is different, don't open the file.
1224882b4c59df1db356dff71bf2e0f8949224469bce26da76a1a3b64bc2e144
Source code: b3c286471ee8927a1089b72ed038d4c7339af25996aad48472c1793bcd7bbc3c · SHA256SUMS.txt
Liquid Glass needs macOS 26; on older versions the island is black. Free software under the GNU General Public License v3.0, with no warranty. Credits: Atoll and boring.notch (GPL-3.0), mediaremote-adapter by ungive (BSD-3-Clause).
macOS rewards patience with private corners.
Half the features rely on parts of macOS with no public documentation: the system now playing, window layers above the lock screen, audio taps per app. The hard part was not making them work, but making them fail safely when a permission is missing.
Song, artist, events, files and clipboard in the video and screenshots are demo data, made up for presentation.