The "top bar" on a Mac is two things: the menu bar that runs across the top of the screen, and the notch that sits in the middle of it on modern MacBooks. Most guides only cover the first. The notch is where the real gains are, because it is the one part of your display that ships doing nothing at all.
This page focuses on the notch half. If you want the menu bar mechanics — Command-dragging icons, Control Center toggles, auto-hide, clock formatting — those are covered in full in how to customise the macOS menu bar.
The two halves of the top bar
On a MacBook Pro (2021 or later) or MacBook Air (M2 or later), the notch physically divides the menu bar. macOS treats the region behind it as unusable space and lays status icons out from the right edge leftward, hiding anything that collides with the cutout.
So the top bar you actually control is:
- The status area — right of the notch. Reorderable, hideable, entirely yours.
- The app menus — left of the notch. Fixed by whichever app is frontmost.
- The notch itself — dead by default, and the subject of the rest of this page.
What Mac notch customization actually means
There are three distinct approaches, and people often conflate them:
- Hide it. Make the notch disappear visually, either with a black-topped wallpaper or by running a scaled resolution that letterboxes the menu bar. You lose vertical screen space and gain nothing functional. See how to hide the notch on Mac.
- Decorate it. Wallpapers designed to play with the cutout rather than mask it — the notch becomes part of the image. See Mac notch wallpapers.
- Use it. Turn the notch into an interactive surface that expands on hover. This is the only option that gives you something back.
Turning the notch into a control surface
macOS provides no API for putting your own content in the notch, so this requires an app. NotchNest wraps the notch in a hover-activated panel and lets you choose exactly what lives there:
- Calendar with the day's agenda and AI briefings
- AI clipboard with searchable history
- Quick Notes with on-device AI refinement
- Pomodoro timer that keeps running while the panel is closed
- Music controls for Spotify and Apple Music
- Drag-to-AirDrop and a File-Tray for recent files
- Camera mirror for a one-tap appearance check
- Bookmarks shelf for links you reach for daily
Each widget toggles independently, so the panel only contains what you use. You can also set whether it opens on hover or click, assign a hotkey, and pick how it looks when idle — fully collapsed, or showing a slim battery capsule.
The reason this counts as top-bar customization rather than just another app: you have added capability without adding another icon to a bar that is already fighting for room. Details in using the notch as a menu bar replacement.
Customizing the top bar on a Mac with no notch
On a Mac mini, iMac, Mac Studio, MacBook Air M1 or any pre-2021 MacBook Pro, there is no cutout — but the top-centre region of the display is still empty. NotchNest renders there as a slim drop-down panel anchored to the top of the screen, with every widget behaving the same way. You get the same customization surface without the hardware.
Tune spacing and density
Menu bar spacing is fixed by macOS and cannot be changed. Perceived clutter can. The combination that works: cut always-on icons down to the four or five you genuinely watch, push the rest behind an organiser, and move the things you interact with — timer, clipboard, agenda — into the notch panel where they get room to breathe.
Try the interactive notch playground to preview the layout before installing anything.
Reverting any of it
Every change described here is reversible in seconds and none of it touches system files. Icon order resets by Command-dragging back, or by relaunching the owning app. Control Center toggles flip back. Notch widgets turn off individually, and uninstalling the app returns the notch to being dead space.
Make your notch useful
NotchNest puts ten tools in your MacBook's notch. Free on the Mac App Store.
