Nubble: Put Your Mac's Notch to Work

The notch on a MacBook is a black rectangle you look past all day. Nubble gives it a job.


Nubble is a small, free app for macOS from Crooli Labs. It sits in the notch, stays out of the way, and opens when you need it. There is no account, no trial and no subscription. Get it at nubble.crooli.com.

A shelf for files

Drag a file to the top of the screen and the notch opens into a shelf. Drop the file there to park it, switch to another app or folder, then drag it back out. It is the quickest way to move something between two places that are never on screen at the same time.

The shelf knows what you are carrying. Drag in images and it offers to convert them. Drag in a video and it offers to pull out the soundtrack. Drag in a folder and it offers to tidy it into groups, such as screenshots.

• Convert images to PNG, JPG, HEIC, TIFF, GIF or BMP.
• Convert audio to M4A, WAV, AIFF or FLAC, from an audio file or straight from a video.
• Compress files to make them smaller.
• Zip a selection into one archive.

Converted, compressed and zipped copies are saved next to the originals. Nubble never changes the files you give it.

Quiet pop-ups

The rest of the time, Nubble uses the notch to tell you small things without covering what you are doing. Each pop-up grows out of the notch, stays for a moment and tucks itself away.

• Now playing. The current track and artist, with play controls. When the audio is from a browser tab, Nubble shows that site's icon.
• Volume and brightness. A slim bar in the notch instead of the big overlay in the middle of the screen.
• Battery. When you plug in or unplug, and a warning when the battery runs low.
• Headphones. When AirPods or another audio device connects, with its battery levels.
• Downloads and screenshots. A glance at a new file the moment it lands, ready to drag somewhere.
• Focus timer. Start a 1, 5, 15, 25 or 45 minute timer from the notch, and Nubble tells you when it is done.

You can turn each kind of pop-up on or off (media, system, downloads and screenshots), and pick the accent colour that lights them up.

Built for the Mac

Nubble is a native Mac app written in Swift. It is small, can open when you log in, and updates itself when a new version is ready.

It works on any Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later, with Apple silicon or Intel. On a MacBook with a notch it fits the notch exactly, whatever its size. On a Mac without one, such as a Mac mini, an iMac or an external display, it appears as a small pill at the top centre of the screen.

Getting it

The quickest way to install Nubble is the one-line Terminal command on the download page. It puts Nubble in your Applications folder and opens it.

You can also download the disk image and drag Nubble into Applications. Nubble is not notarised by Apple yet, so the first time you open a downloaded copy, macOS will say it cannot check the app. Right-click Nubble in Applications and choose Open, or click Open Anyway in System Settings → Privacy & Security. You only need to do this once, and the Terminal install skips it entirely.

There is no account and no tracking. Your files never leave your Mac. Nubble only goes online for two things: checking nubble.crooli.com for updates, and fetching the icon of the site that is playing audio.

If something does not work the way you expect, tell us. Nubble is a Labs project, which means it changes quickly, and the fastest changes come from people using it.