I have tried a variety of notch apps, and I haven't been truly happy
with any of them. I am not sure whether the novelty of the interface is
the problem, or if it's the design of the apps I've used that bothers
me. I recently installed Droppy, an app built entirely with
Swift for speed and stability, and I like it more than the other notch
apps I've used. I don't say this lightly, but it could be the best $7
you ever spend on software.
It isn't overloaded with superfluous features, and the features it does have can be toggled on and off easily. It also seems very
stable--I haven't encountered any bugs so far.
Utility Replacements
Depending on which features you enable, Droppy can replace several
categories of single-purpose apps:
Clipboard Manager -- Toggled off by default, you can enable a clipboard manager that's accessible from the notch interface. If you cut and paste a wide variety of elements all day long, you'll want something more powerful, but for casual use it gets the job done. It has keyboard controls, lets you choose how many items to keep in your history, and includes privacy protections like disabling password storage or excluding entire apps. If you copy an image containing text--whether it's a photo or a screenshot--Droppy can use OCR to extract that text.
Mini Music Player -- The mini music player displays the current track and album art in the notch, with the usual controls for previous and next tracks, play, and pause.It works with Apple Music and Spotify.
File Shelf -- Droppy lets you drag files in and out of the notch or into a floating window, much like apps such as Dropover, Yoink, and Gladys.
Quick Share - Upload files to the cloud and share the link with anyone
Mini-terminal - Run Shell commands right from the notch
Transcription - Use Droppy to transcribe text that you dictate.
Extensions
Just Some of the Exrensions
Droppy's architecture allows you to add or remove features through
extensions. This keeps the bloat down. You won't be faced with menu
options for Spotify or Alfred if, like me, you don't use either of those
products. The currently available extensions include:
AI background removal
Alfred integration
Adding the Services menu
Spotify integration
Screen capture of UI elements
Window snapping
Voice transcription
Other Features
A heads-up display appears when you use the keyboard controls for brightness and volume. You can also enable an HUD for AirPods if you use them with your Mac.
On my M2 MacBook Air, Droppy uses about as much memory as Apple Notes or Messages--that is to say, not much. It does consume some CPU cycles and power, but it's not going to hog your system resources.
You can choose to have Droppy appear as a notch even on Macs that don't actually have one. Alternatively, you can have it appear as a Dynamic Island to mimic the behavior on the iPhone. The functionality is the same either way.
Other Notch Apps
I tried Notchnook shortly after it came out, and it felt more like a
minimally viable product than a finished app--despite its $25 price tag.
It left a bad taste in my mouth.
My second choice in this category is Dynamic
Lake Pro, which sells for $15.90 on Gumroad. It has a couple of
features Droppy doesn't, such as a weather and calendar HUD and
notification support. It's updated frequently, and the developer is very
responsive to bug reports and user questions.
No Drama
The developer of Droppy was recently subjected to a concerted campaign
of disparagement by a competitor that involved brigading and a lot of
Reddit style drama. That's unfortunate but he handled it with grace and
class. If you have questions, here
is a good explainer.
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