Ledge A free, open-source notch app for MacBook.
Your MacBook's notch, put to work.
brew install --cask egemertbalcik/tap/ledge
Free, signed and notarized. You need a MacBook with a notch and macOS 26 or later.
Like the iPhone's Dynamic Island, for the Mac.
Ledge is a macOS app that puts a small status area around the MacBook notch. It shows what's playing, a running timer, your next meeting, the weather and your notes, and it takes over the volume and brightness pop-ups. It's free and open source under GPL-3.0. There's no account and no telemetry.
Now playing,
always in view.
Works with Music, Spotify and anything playing in a browser tab. Move the pointer to the notch and the card opens under it. From there you can skip, scrub through the track, or switch the output to your AirPods.
Your week,
a glance away.
The card shows the day's events next to a month view. In Settings you can pick which calendars show up for each account.
A mirror before
the meeting.
When a meeting is about to start, a small mirror shows up on the Join button. Click it and your camera opens inside the card, so you can check how you look before you join. Nothing is recorded, and the camera turns off when the card closes.
The weather, without
opening anything.
Right now, the next few hours, and a heads-up before it rains.
Leave it working
and walk away.
Keep Awake holds the Mac and the screen on, like caffeinate without the terminal. One stop further and your agents and long builds keep running with the lid shut, until the time you set.
The lid-closed stop uses a small root helper, installed only while that stop is on. If Ledge quits, the Mac can sleep again. How Keep Awake works.
Write it down
before it's gone.
For a phone number, a terminal command, or anything else you'd forget in ten minutes. Notes are plain files on your Mac, and any of them goes to Apple Notes in one click.
And the rest.
- Volume and brightness
- Shown in the notch instead of the macOS pop-up. Hover over the bar and you can drag it.
- AirPods and Bluetooth
- When they connect you see it in the notch, with the battery for the case and each earbud.
- Battery
- The current level, and a warning while there's still time to plug in.
- Focus
- Tells you which Focus mode just turned on, then stays quiet while it's on.
- File shelf
- Drag files onto the notch to park them, and drag them out when you need them. New screenshots show up there too.
- Camera and microphone
- A dot shows up when an app is using the camera or the microphone.
- Caps Lock and keyboard layout
- Shows when Caps Lock turns on and when you switch keyboard layouts.
- Levels
- A card with volume and brightness sliders, for keyboards that don't have those keys.
You can turn each of these off separately. Anything you turn off stops running and won't ask for permissions.
It records nothing.
Ledge doesn't capture your screen or audio, and it doesn't save anything from the camera. The equalizer next to the song isn't listening to your music. It's an animation generated from the track. Ledge is also hidden from screenshots, screen recordings and screen sharing, unless you turn that off.
It only goes online for four things:
- the weather, from Open-Meteo, with your location rounded to about a kilometre
- the place name for it, from Apple
- cover art for what is playing
- the update check
There's no account and no tracking, in the app or on this site. The privacy page has the details.
What you need.
- Mac
- A MacBook with a notch in its built-in display, such as the 14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2021 and the MacBook Air from 2022 onwards
- macOS
- macOS 26 or later
- Price
- Free. No trial, no subscription
- License
- GPL-3.0
- Account
- None
- Install
- A signed, notarized disk image. Drag Ledge into Applications and open it from Finder
- Updates
- Built in, through Sparkle. Check for Updates is in Settings, under General
- Version
- 1.2.5, released 30 October 2026. Release notes
Ledge only draws on the MacBook's built-in screen, on purpose. External monitors and Macs without a notch don't get anything. There's no Dock icon: the notch is the app. To get to Settings, open Ledge again from Finder or Spotlight.
Questions.
Is Ledge free?
Yes. There's no trial or subscription, and you don't need an account. The source is on GitHub under GPL-3.0. Donations are optional.
Is Ledge a Dynamic Island for the Mac?
It works in the same spirit. macOS doesn't use the notch for anything, so Ledge puts things around it: what's playing, a timer, your next meeting and short notices. Move the pointer there and a card opens.
Which Macs and macOS versions does Ledge support?
A MacBook with a notch in its built-in display, such as the 14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2021 and the MacBook Air from 2022 onwards, running macOS 26 or later. It does not run on macOS 15 or earlier.
Does Ledge work on an external monitor or a Mac without a notch?
No. It only shows up on the built-in display of a MacBook with a notch.
Does Ledge record my screen or listen to my audio?
No. It doesn't capture your screen or audio, and nothing from the camera is saved. The equalizer next to the song is an animation. It doesn't listen to anything.
Is Ledge safe to install?
The app is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so macOS opens it normally. It isn't sandboxed, and it uses three private Apple frameworks. The README lists them and what each one is for. Nothing is asked for at launch: each permission is requested by the feature that uses it.
Can I install Ledge with Homebrew?
Yes: brew install --cask egemertbalcik/tap/ledge. Ledge updates itself through Sparkle, so you don't need to run brew upgrade for it.
Where is Ledge available to download?
From ledgeapp.dev, from the Releases page of github.com/egemertbalcik/Ledge or with Homebrew. All three give you the same app, signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Other sites with similar names are not connected to Ledge.
Open source.
The full source is on GitHub. If something breaks, you can open an issue there.
brew install --cask egemertbalcik/tap/ledge