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Claude Notch: steering Claude Code from the notch

The notch glows while Claude works, turns red when it needs you, and turns every in-session question into a button, so you never switch to a terminal just to say yes.

1 min read #swift#macos#ai#claude-code

When Claude Code runs in a terminal behind other windows, you find out it needs you late. Claude Notch moves that signal to the one place always in view: the notch.

Glow first

It glows orange while Claude works, red when it’s waiting on you, green when it’s done, then retracts into the bezel. Press it and it opens to show the current tool call (Reading foo.swift, Running npm test) with a stop button that sends exactly what ⌃C does.

Every choice reaches the notch

Permission requests arrive through Claude Code’s PermissionRequest hook, and the notch shows Approve / Deny. Some prompts fire no hook at all, like a “Switch model to Sonnet?” confirmation, so the notch reads the terminal screen and offers the numbered options as buttons. The goal is that opening a session just to confirm something never makes sense.

When something needs you, it opens on its own long enough to read and click, with an optional sound.

At a glance

  • a slim context-window meter that climbs toward auto-compaction
  • a badge when work has been delegated to a subagent
  • a rough running cost per session
  • model, reasoning and permission mode for the live session in one drawer
  • recent sessions to resume, and every live session sorted by who needs you first

Built to be trusted

No dependencies beyond the frameworks that ship with macOS, and a universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel. The installer is a short script you’re encouraged to read: it verifies the release’s SHA-256, backs up ~/.claude/settings.json before adding its nine hooks, and --uninstall-hooks removes only its own.

The app isn’t notarized (that needs a paid Apple developer account), and the README lays out the three ways around Gatekeeper and who you’re trusting with each. v0.1.0 and v0.1.1 both shipped on July 20th, and CI runs the self-test on every push.

Claude Notch Downloads, source and full README