NotchWave
A live waveform that grows out of your MacBook’s notch. It listens to the microphone, everything your Mac plays, or a single app.
The same settings as the Mac app. Every change shows up on the notch above straight away.
Now Playing
Input
Appearance
Motion
Settings are remembered in this browser.
When nothing is playing, there’s nothing to see.
The notch is hardware, so no app can draw inside it. NotchWave draws a black shape with the same rounded corners, sized from what macOS reports for your screen. At rest it lines up with the notch exactly. When sound starts it opens on a spring, and it settles back after a short pause.
All computer audio, the microphone, or one app on its own, such as just Spotify.
The frequency layout and line waveforms come from my Max/MSP rotating-vinyl visualiser, unrolled along the menu bar.
A 2048-point FFT on Apple’s Accelerate framework, drawn every display frame.
Audio is analysed in memory on your Mac and thrown away milliseconds later.
Free and open source. Build it with Xcode in about a minute.
git clone https://github.com/atharvabankarsound/notch-audio-visualizer.git cd notch-audio-visualizer ./scripts/build-app.sh open build/NotchWave.app
A waveform icon appears in the menu bar. Choose an input there, or open Settings for the same controls as on this page.