New Droppy Release is a Full Featured Utility Suite

An update to Droppy by developer Jordy Spruit dropped this weekend. What started as a free notch app has evolved into a paid, but still inexpensive, suite of Mac productivity tools.

The licensing recently changed so that Droppy’s one-time payment now gets you a license for two Macs instead of one. The change is retroactive and applies to all users. From now until May 31st, the price is €6.99. After that, it will be €9.99. Both prices include lifetime updates, including major version releases.

Droppy is written in native Swift. It’s signed and notarized by Apple, runs on macOS 14 and later, and ships without analytics or third-party trackers.

Spruit says, “v14 contains more than 100 user-visible bug fixes and dozens of performance improvements, all driven by feedback from the Discord testers I’ve been working with daily for months.”

My Personal Use Cases

In previous versions of Droppy, I’ve used the notch based shelf, the menu bar manager, and the heads up displays extensively while dabbling with the other features. With the extensive additions in the new version, I plan to see what else feels like a good fit for my work style.

Five Functions, One App

You can roughly classify what Droppy v14 does into five areas.

1. Drag-and-drop shelf that lives in the notch
   Drop files onto it to stash them temporarily, then drag them back out when needed or run quick actions like move, copy, share, zip, unzip, compress, or convert.
2. Clipboard Manager
   Includes live previews, pinned and favorited entries, OCR, a built-in screenshot editor, custom tags, and more.
3. Floating Shelves
   Droppy calls them “baskets,” but the concept is similar to the shelf in the notch. You can designate watched folders that automatically populate baskets with files, and the interface supports multiple baskets at once.
4. Heads-Up Displays (HUDs)
   You can selectively enable notch-based HUDs for things like:
5. • Volume or brightness changes
   • AirPods connections
   • Internet connectivity loss
   • VPN connections
   • Low battery warnings
   • Music playback
   • Notifications
   • Caffeine activation to prevent sleep
6. Extensions
   Droppy calls them “Droplets.” These are add-on features that plug into the notch interface.

There’s no extra charge for extensions, and several of them realistically replace standalone apps.

Included extensions include:

• Voice transcription, including live transcription feedback while speaking; something many competing apps still don't offer (new)
• Mechanical keyboard typing sounds routed only through headphones during meetings so you don't blast everyone else on the call
• An AI coding companion that surfaces activity from Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex directly in the notch, with one-click return to the active app
• A major overhaul to menu bar management via an internal version of Thaw, a fork of Ice, bundled directly into Droppy
  Clipboard manager
• Droppy Cloud; a temporary file-sharing service that generates 24-hour share links (new)
• Meeting controls for Zoom, Teams, and similar apps
• Pomodoro timer
• Tiny terminal, and more

Replacement Suggestions

Dedicated apps will usually go deeper in specific areas, but if you mainly need solid day-to-day functionality, Droppy v14 could realistically replace:

• MacWhisper or similar transcription apps
• Bartender, Hidden Bar, or Barbee for menu bar management
• Yoink, Gladys, or Unclutter for shelf-style workflows
• Clack or other mechanical keyboard sound apps
• PastePal, Paste, Copy 'Em, and similar clipboard tools
• Dropover or DropShare
• A separate Pomodoro timer app

Some Notable New Features

Droppy Cloud

The sharing limits are generous:

• 100 MB per file
• 1 GB per share
• 25 files per share
• 1 GB of active shared data per installation at a time

The generated links open into an iCloud-style interface with:

• Image previews in a grid with click-to-expand
• Inline video and audio playback
• Inline PDF viewing
• Individual downloads plus “Download All” ZIP support
• A clean, mobile-friendly layout

Lock Screen Display

When playing music in Apple Music, the lock screen now displays expanded album artwork. Synced lyrics scroll over a soft blur effect that keeps them readable even against busy animated art.

New UI

According to the developer, every animation in the app has been rebuilt by hand. When the shelf opens, a HUD appears, a widget swaps, or the notch reacts to your cursor, the motion now shares one consistent spring-based feel.

The small floating pill below the notch expands similarly to Dynamic Island on iPhone, and the shelf physically drops down from the notch instead of simply fading in.

Feedback on the Update

Droppy makes reasonable demands on system resources based on what it does. At idle it consumes about 5% of my M4 CPU and around 275 MB of RAM, about the same amount as the apps, Drafts and Mona for Mastodon use on my system.

The new interface is subtle, but well executed. Nothing feels over-designed just for the sake of animation demos.

Since Droppy Cloud runs on the developer’s own infrastructure, the 24-hour expiration window makes sense. Features with ongoing hosting costs usually end up behind subscriptions sooner or later, so it’s refreshing to see this included in a one-time purchase.

I was accustomed to the previous menu bar manager, so the switch to the integrated Thaw-based system took a little adjustment. But after using it for a bit, it feels like a real upgrade rather than a cosmetic replacement. It exposes more functionality than the older implementation and fits better with the rest of the app.

Droppy already does an almost unreasonable number of things, but I still have one request: I’d love to see a lightweight notes or scratchpad interface added somewhere in the ecosystem. Nothing elaborate; just a quick place to park temporary text while working.

Wrap-Up

Droppy v14 feels less like a “notch utility” now and more like a modular productivity platform that happens to live around the notch. Some people will absolutely think it’s trying to do too much. Fair enough. But if your workflow already overlaps with clipboard managers, shelf apps, menu bar utilities, lightweight sharing tools, and small workflow helpers, there’s a good chance Droppy consolidates more of your setup than you’d expect.