Your MacBook already has a black rectangle at the top of the screen doing nothing. Crest hangs a real control panel from it: what is playing, what is next, what your Mac is doing, and an AI that can act on all of it. It never takes focus and never steals a click from your menu bar.
Free tier forever, no account · 7 days of Pro when you sign in · macOS 14 Sonoma or later · signed and notarized · 14-day refund
A menu bar item makes you click. A window makes you switch. The notch is the one place on a Mac your eyes land without being asked, which is why it is the right home for the three things you check twenty times a day.
Crest 5, drawn live from the shipped interface. Click a tile to zoom into it, or a mode to re-sort the stage.
An agent that needs permission stops being useful the moment you stop noticing it asked. Crest puts the question in the notch, pinned, over fullscreen apps, on whichever display you are looking at, and keeps it there until you answer.
Claude Code and Codex ask through a sanctioned hook. You answer at the top of the screen and the agent carries on. No window switch, no lost context.
The prompt sticks until it is answered rather than vanishing after a few seconds, because a missed approval is an agent sitting still.
Ask or dictate, get an answer, and let it create the reminder, todo or event it suggested, after you approve. Uses your Claude subscription, no API key.
All nineteen, drawn the way Crest 5 draws them. Click a tile and it zooms into its module; the dock opens any of them.
Free forever, with no account: Now Playing, the Shelf with your clipboard history, and window snapping. Pro unlocks the other fifteen for one payment, $19.99 once. Take and Minutes are their own apps, run from here. Arrange puts the modules you use on each mode's stage, and the rest wait in the dock.
There are good notch apps. What none of them do is answer your coding agent, keep your servers a tap away, and drive two other apps from the same panel.
| Crest | Boring Notch | NotchNook | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code and Codex approvals in the notch | Yes | No | No |
| An AI co-pilot that can create events and todos | Yes | No | No |
| Saved SSH hosts that open in your terminal | Yes | No | No |
| Drives a screen recorder and a meeting notetaker | Yes | No | No |
| Now Playing with synced lyrics | Yes | Playback, no lyrics | Playback, no lyrics |
| Free tier that keeps working | Yes | Open source | Paid |
| One-time purchase | Yes | Free | Yes |
Published by the makers of Crest, from each app's own public documentation as of July 2026. Competitor names are the property of their owners. The longer Boring Notch comparison · vs NotchNook · vs Alcove · vs TopNotch · vs Perch · vs Notchmeister · vs MediaMate · NotchNook alternatives · Best Mac notch apps in 2026
The free tier is not a countdown. Pro adds every module above and stays yours.
Now Playing, the Shelf with your clipboard history, and window snapping. No expiry, no nag screen.
Sign in when you want 7 days of Pro, no card.
Download freeNo card, and no account to download.
Every module, on 2 Macs, forever. Free updates for the life of the app.
Nothing renews and nothing expires.
Crest Pro plus Take and Minutes, the two apps this panel drives.
$25 less than buying them separately.
Card, PayPal, Apple Pay or crypto, tax included. 14-day refund, no reason needed. Everything you own lives at your account. What changed in the last release
No. Crest was designed around the notch, and on a MacBook that has one it lives inside it. On any other Mac, or on a display without a notch, it sits in a small pill at the top of the screen: hover it for the peek, click it for the same panel.
Not to download it and not for the free tier. You sign in, with Google, Apple or an email, when you want the free Pro week or when you buy, because that is where your licence lives.
No. Other notch apps have a reputation for always-on animation. Crest pauses its animations on battery and in Low Power Mode, and sleeps its monitors when your Mac sleeps.
Every module runs locally and there is no analytics. Crest goes online to sign you in, check the licence and look for updates. Weather, lyrics and pull requests come straight from their source, and the co-pilot goes through your own Claude account. None of it passes through us. The full list is on the privacy page.
Crest checks by itself and can install in place, and Settings has a Check for updates button. Every update is free for the life of the app.
The free tier keeps working, forever, with nothing deleted. Anything you made in a Pro module is still there and comes straight back if you buy.
Download free, with no account. Sign in for 7 days of Pro, and when they end the free tier keeps working, forever.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later · signed and notarized by Apple
Homebrew user? brew install --cask zack40x/crest/crest