NotchMindOpen and close
- Open: move your pointer onto the notch and hold it there for a moment. By default it opens after a quarter of a second.
- Close: move the pointer away. The notch shrinks back.
Prefer clicking? Change Expand gesture to Click or Press and hold in gesture settings. You can also set a keyboard shortcut that opens and closes the notch; see keyboard shortcuts.
What you see
When nothing is happening, opening the notch shows Home: a row of pages such as Music, Timer, Weather and Developer Tools. Swipe sideways with two fingers on the trackpad (or scroll) to move between them. Choose and reorder Home pages.
When something is happening, the collapsed notch shows it as a live activity: the song that’s playing, a timer counting down, a download, a call. Opening the notch shows that activity in full. When two things happen at once, the one with the higher priority wins; see activity priorities.
Move between an activity and Home
When Claude Code or Codex is working, the notch shows the coding agents panel. To get to Home from there, swipe sideways on it with two fingers or choose Open Home. From the first Home page, swipe back to return to the panel.
Hide an activity for now
Swipe up over the notch to hide the current activity, and swipe down to bring it back. See swipe up to hide, swipe down to restore.
The notch menu
Right-click the notch for Customize Home…, Clipboard History, Check for Updates, Settings, Restart and Quit. This menu always works, even if you hide the menu bar icon; then it also offers Show Menu Bar Icon.