Crest 6

Crest 6: the notch, redesigned from the ground up.

Crest is a notch app for the MacBook. Version 6 rebuilds all of it: how it moves, what it shows on the closed notch, how you lay out your widgets, and how your coding agents ask you things. It is a free update for everyone who has Crest.

Released 30 September 2026 · now at 6.0.1

One shape, from the notch

Everything Crest shows grows out of the notch and settles back into it on real springs. The closed notch, the peek you get on hover, a full page and a question from Claude are all the same black shape, only bigger or smaller.

Crest's peek under the MacBook notch: the song, the artist and the controls, in the same black shape as the notch — Hover the notch for a peek. It grows out of the notch and folds back when you move away.

Music on the closed notch

While something plays, the closed notch shows it in the style you pick: two bubbles either side of the notch, with the album art on one side and a live equaliser on the other, or wings tucked inside the notch. Hover for the peek, click for the full player with synced lyrics and the queue.

Pages instead of tabs

Click the notch and it opens onto a row of pages: Now, Home, Work and Code. Swipe with two fingers, use the arrow keys or click the dots to move between them. Since 6.0.1 you choose the swipe direction in Settings, Natural or Inverted, and a two-finger swipe on a widget’s full screen takes you back to its page.

The Home page in Crest 6: Now Playing, the weather, the calendar and batteries, as widgets in one shape under the notch — The Home page: music, the weather, the calendar and batteries.

Eighteen widgets you stretch

Each page holds widgets you pick from the gallery. Stretch one from small to wide, hold to edit, drag to move. Five of the eighteen are free, with no account:

Shelf Free
Clipboard Free
System
Notes
Pull requests
Agents
Weather
Focus timer
Batteries
Now Playing Free
Calendar
Reminders
Controls
Claude
Notifications
Hosts
Take Free
Minutes Free

Crest Pro unlocks the other thirteen for $19.99 once. A short first run builds your Home from what you use, so you do not start from an empty page.

Editing Home in Crest 6: stretch or remove widgets, and add Shelf, Clipboard, System, Notes or Pull requests from the gallery — Editing Home: every widget shows how to stretch or remove it, and the gallery sits underneath.

One card for every coding agent

Claude Code, Codex and GitHub Copilot CLI questions arrive as one card on the notch. Pick an answer, type your own, or allow or deny a command, without leaving what you are doing. The allow sheet has an “Allow the rest of this session” switch for the runs you trust, and questions still come to you, because those are real decisions. How it works with Claude Code.

A Claude Code question as one card on the notch: the options, a field to type your own answer, and the session it came from — A question from Claude Code, as one card: the options, your own answer, and which session asked.

Notes, to-dos and a clipboard history

Notes and checklists, to-dos with due dates you just type (“call the bank tomorrow 9am”), your calendar with Join, the Shelf for files, and a new clipboard history you can search. Passwords you copy are never kept. Each one is a widget on a page and a full screen when you need more room.

Crest 6 to-dos on the notch: today's list with due times, and a field that reads dates as you type — To-dos on the notch. Type the date the way you would say it.

Volume and window snapping

Scroll on the notch to change the volume. On the open notch, the level shows as it changes. Drag a window up, hold it at the notch, and drop it into one of twelve layouts: halves, thirds, quarters, centre or full screen. Snapping is free and needs no account; macOS asks for Accessibility on your first drag.

Crest 6 window snapping: a window held at the notch shows twelve layouts to drop it into — Hold a window at the notch and pick one of twelve layouts.

Also new, and one thing gone

A new Settings window you can search.
Swipes and clicks on the open notch always reach Crest now, even while it changes size (6.0.1).
Batteries reads your Mac’s battery health correctly on macOS 27, shows your AirPods once, and skips devices without a name (6.0.1).
A screen with a long list keeps its margins and scrolls inside (6.0.1).
The custom language model option (OpenAI, OpenRouter, Ollama) is gone. Crest’s Claude features now use Claude Code, and the key you had saved is removed from your Keychain.

Every release, with the small print, is in the Crest changelog.

Questions

Is Crest 6 a free update?

Yes. Every update is free for the life of the app, so Crest 6 costs nothing if you already have Crest, free or Pro.

How do I get Crest 6?

Crest checks for updates by itself and can install in place, and Settings has a Check for updates button. You can also download it from crestnotch.app/download, or run brew upgrade --cask crest if you installed it with Homebrew.

Which widgets are free in Crest 6?

Five of the eighteen: the Shelf, the Clipboard, Now Playing, Take and Minutes. Window snapping is free too. Crest Pro unlocks the other thirteen for $19.99 once.

What does Crest 6 need?

macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on any Mac. On a MacBook with a notch it lives in the notch; on any other screen it sits in a small pill at the top.

What was removed in Crest 6?

The custom language model option (OpenAI, OpenRouter and Ollama). Crest’s Claude features now use Claude Code, and the key you had saved is removed from your Keychain.

Get Crest 6

Free to download, and the free tier never expires. Already have Crest? The update is free: Crest offers it by itself, or use Check for updates in Settings.

Download Crest for macOS Get Crest Pro, $19.99

macOS 14 or later · Universal (Apple Silicon & Intel) · 7-day Pro trial, no card up front

Keep reading: Crest overview · Best Mac notch apps in 2026 · Dynamic Island for Mac · Claude Code in the notch · vs NotchNook · vs The Boring Notch · vs Alcove · Changelog