BlogRelease notes3 October 20265 min read

What's new in NotchDude 1.5

Update, 8 October 2026: Since NotchDude 1.11.4, you can also edit Home with the edit button beside ···, add widgets from a tray, finish with Done or Cancel, and spread tiles over up to three pages. Holding a tile still works.

NotchDude 1.5 is the biggest update since launch. Home is now yours to arrange, AI Usage follows your coding agents while they work, and a handful of small tools (Keep Mac Awake, sound output switching, and File Shelf quick actions) save a trip to another app. Here's what changed and how to use it.

A Home you arrange yourself

Home used to be a fixed set of cards. In 1.5 it's a grid of live tiles that works like your phone's Home Screen. Each tile shows something useful without opening the widget: the song that's playing with its controls, your next event and how soon it starts, the last thing you copied, your Focus timer, and your AI limits.

• Move tiles by dragging them. The others flow around.
• Hold a tile to edit Home. Tiles jiggle, and you can remove one or drag its corner to resize it: Small, Wide, Large, or Full.
• Add a widget by dragging its tab up onto Home.
• Reorder the tabs by dragging them sideways. Home keeps its own order, separate from the tab bar.

The tab bar also moved. In the Compact panel it now floats in its own pill just below the notch, which leaves the whole panel for the widget.

AI Usage follows your agents

AI Usage already showed your Claude Code and Codex 5-hour and weekly limits. Now it also shows what your agents are doing. When Claude Code or Codex is working, its card names the project, and you can tell at a glance whether it's busy or waiting for you.

You don't even need to open the panel. While an agent works, the closed notch shows its icon, gently pulsing, with how much of its 5-hour limit is used. Move on to something else and glance up when you want to know if it's done.

Cursor and Antigravity get cards too. They keep their plan limits on their own servers, so their cards show recent activity rather than percentages. The cards rearrange and resize like Home tiles, and you can remove the ones you don't use.

Privacy hasn't changed: NotchDude reads the end of the agents' local logs for the project folder name, timing, and tool names. It never reads your prompts, replies, or code. Agent sessions are part of AI Usage, a Pro feature. For more on the limits themselves, read how Claude Code and Codex limits work.

Keep Mac Awake

Long download, a build that takes a while, or a slide deck you don't want going dark mid-sentence? Open the ··· menu in the notch, choose Keep Mac Awake, and pick 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, or until you turn it off. A small cup on the closed notch reminds you it's on. It's free, and if you'd like to know the other ways to do this, I wrote a guide to keeping your Mac awake.

Switch where your music plays

The Music widget has a new output button next to the volume. Click it to move sound between your Mac's speakers, headphones, AirPlay speakers, and other outputs, without opening Control Center. It's free for everyone.

File Shelf quick actions

The File Shelf can now change files, not just hold them. Select files and you can:

• Zip them into one archive.
• Convert images to PNG, JPEG, or HEIC.
• Copy the text from an image or PDF.
• Cut out the subject of a photo, for a quick transparent PNG.

Each new file lands on the shelf, ready to drag into an email, a chat, or Finder. Everything runs on your Mac with built-in system frameworks, so nothing is uploaded.

Glass and Tint

Settings › Appearance has two new sliders. Glass sets how much of your desktop shows through the open notch, from solid black to frosted glass. Tint sets how dark that glass is, so text stays easy to read on bright wallpapers. The screenshots on this site use solid black, to match the camera housing.

A new look, and a new price

1.5.1 brings a new black-and-silver NotchDude logo to the app icon, the menu bar, and the idle notch. Pro is $9.99 for life, and until November 30, 2026 it's $6.99 with a 30% launch discount. Pro still covers up to 3 Macs, and the free tools keep working without a purchase.

How to update

NotchDude checks for updates on its own. To update now, choose Check for Updates… from the menu bar icon or the notch's ··· menu. New here? Download NotchDude and every Pro feature is unlocked for your first 48 hours. The user guide covers everything in detail.