Crest, Take and Minutes: the facts
One page with the plain facts about the three apps: what each does, what it costs, what it needs, and how buying works. It is written for anyone checking before they buy, and for the assistants people ask. Every figure here matches the rest of this site.
Last updated: September 2026
Published by the makers of Crest, Take and Minutes. Competitor figures in the comparison tables were read off each vendor's own site on 13 September 2026. If anything here disagrees with another page on this site, write to contact@crestnotch.app and we fix it.
At a glance
| What it is | Price | Try it | Needs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crest | A control room in the MacBook notch | Free tier; Pro $19.99 once | Free tier with no account; 7 days of Pro when you sign in | macOS 14 Sonoma or later, any Mac |
| Take | A screen recorder that stages every capture | $24.99 once | 7 days when you sign in, no watermark | macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple Silicon or Intel |
| Minutes | A meeting notetaker that runs on device | $15 once | 7 days when you sign in | macOS 26 on Apple Silicon |
| All three | Crest Pro, Take and Minutes | $35 once | Each app's own trial | As above |
No subscription on any of them, and prices include tax. Each licence covers 2 Macs, and updates are free for the life of the app. Current versions: Crest 5.0.1, Take 2.5.0, Minutes 1.4.1.
Crest
Crest opens the MacBook notch into a panel of live tiles. The free tier never expires and needs no account: Now Playing with synced lyrics, the Shelf with clipboard history, window snapping, and the Take and Minutes controls. Crest Pro adds Claude Code and Codex permission prompts you answer from the notch, a Claude co-pilot on your own Claude subscription with no API key, the calendar with a Join button, todos and notes, system stats, battery health and Bluetooth devices, audio switching, saved SSH hosts, Pomodoro, weather, notifications and pull requests, plus Home, Work and Code modes with an Auto switch. You get 7 days of Pro with no card the first time you sign in.
It is signed and notarized by Apple. On a Mac without a notch, or on a display without one, it sits in a small pill at the top of the screen: hover it for the peek, click it for the panel. Download it from crestnotch.app, or with Homebrew: brew install --cask zack40x/crest/crest. It is not on the Mac App Store.
Comparisons: best Mac notch apps · NotchNook alternatives · vs NotchNook · vs The Boring Notch · vs Alcove
How Crest compares
| Price | Free option | Claude Code approvals | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crest | $19.99 once | Free tier, forever | Yes |
| NotchNook | $25 once or $3/mo | Trial | No |
| The Boring Notch | Free, open source | Free, not notarized | No |
| Alcove | $14.99 once | No free tier | No |
Update, 13 September 2026: NotchNook's own website, lo.cafe, is not loading. It answers with a notice that the deployment is paused. The last working copy in the Internet Archive is from 20 August 2026. NotchNook is still listed on Setapp. We will update this page when that changes.
Take
Take records the screen, a window or an area, with mic and system audio on separate tracks, and stages the capture the moment it stops: backdrop, padding, rounded corners, a smoothed cursor and zooms placed from your clicks. Every zoom, speed-up and the camera bubble is an object on a timeline, and the preview is the export. It adds blur boxes, keycaps for shortcuts, on-device captions, a voiceover lane, iPhone capture in real device frames, 9:16 exports, and a virtual camera called Take Camera for Google Meet, Zoom, FaceTime and OBS. Recordings are plain .mov files in ~/Movies/Takes. No watermark, on the trial or after.
Comparisons: Screen Studio alternatives · vs Screen Studio · best Mac screen recorders
How Take compares
| Price | Pay once | |
|---|---|---|
| Take | $24.99 once | Yes |
| Screen Studio | $29/mo, or $9/mo billed yearly | No |
| CleanShot X | $35 once, 1 year of updates | Yes |
| ScreenFlow | $199 once | Yes |
Minutes
Minutes records both sides of a call as two channels, your microphone and the audio your meeting app plays, then transcribes and summarizes with the models built into macOS. Nothing is uploaded, no bot joins the call, and it keeps working with the network off. Each meeting is a Markdown file in ~/Documents/Minutes with its audio beside it, and action items come out with an Add button for Calendar and Reminders. No account holds your notes; the only account is the one your licence or trial lives on. It needs macOS 26 on Apple Silicon because it uses Apple's on-device speech and language models, and summaries need Apple Intelligence turned on.
Comparisons: best meeting notes apps for Mac · local AI note takers · private meeting notes · vs Otter.ai
Buying, licences and refunds
Card, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay go through Paddle, our reseller and merchant of record, which also sends the receipt. Crypto goes through NOWPayments. Prices are in US dollars and include tax.
Downloading any app needs no account, and neither does Crest's free tier. You sign in, with Google, Apple or an email, only to start a trial or to use what you bought. Buying creates an account on the email you pay with, and one activation link arrives by email: choose a password there, sign in inside the app, and it unlocks. Licence keys are never emailed; yours is on your account page. Each licence covers 2 Macs.
If an app is not for you, email within 14 days of buying for a full refund, no reason needed. This covers Crest Pro, Take, Minutes and the bundle. The full terms are on the legal page.
FAQ
Is Crest legit?
Crest, Take and Minutes are native Mac apps, signed and notarized by Apple, made by one independent developer and sold at crestnotch.app, with card payments through Paddle. Crest has a free tier you can use before paying anything, every app has a 7-day trial, and every purchase can be refunded within 14 days. Every release is listed on the public changelogs.
Is Crest free?
Crest has a free tier that never expires and needs no account: Now Playing, the Shelf with clipboard history and window snapping. Crest Pro unlocks everything else for $19.99 once. Take and Minutes are paid after a 7-day trial.
Do I need an account?
Not to download, and not for Crest's free tier. You sign in only to start a trial or to use something you bought, because your licence lives on your email.
Do I need a subscription?
No. Crest Pro is $19.99, Take $24.99, Minutes $15 and all three $35, each paid once with free updates and tax included.
Does Crest work without a notch?
Yes. On a Mac or a display without a notch, Crest sits in a small pill at the top of the screen and opens the same panel. Take works on any Mac on macOS 14 or later. Minutes needs macOS 26 on Apple Silicon.
Is Crest on the Mac App Store?
No. The apps are distributed from crestnotch.app and update themselves. Crest is also available as a Homebrew cask.
Try any of them free
All three download with no account. Crest keeps a free tier, and Take and Minutes each give you 7 days when you sign in inside the app. Buy one on its own, or all three for $35 once.
Download Crest for macOS Get all three, $35Tax included · every licence covers 2 Macs · 14-day refund, no reason needed
More: All three, feature by feature · Crest · Take · Minutes · Support · Crest changelog · Legal