Personal productivityOriginal Reddit post
Boring Notch not updated in over half a year. Time to move?
I was excited to find Boring Nudge and have been using it quite happily for several months now. Unfortunately it seems like development has stopped. There's been no update since November of last year. Is it time to move on to another app like Alcove?
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Droppy is king in this space when it comes to features in the notch. Worth every penny.
How is better than Alcove ? I've mostly seen Alcove recommended as the best on this sub
Alcoves Dev has done an amazing job polishing the app but feature wise it’s not even close. Even though they are both notch apps they have different visions and Droppy can literally replace many apps you might already have installed. Clipboard management, screenshot editor, meeting controls, camera mirror, file shrinking. So much honestly I can’t name it all.
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I'd vouch for this. Works really well
Couldn’t agree more!! Droppy ROCKS!!
Still somewhat buggy. I have Droppy installed to check in on after updates, but UX is not smooth or intuitive and created more friction for me than than I felt worth it in my use case, but that may just be user preference. Navigation between functions doesn’t work as smoothly as I'd like, and functions often require more actions than necessary. Codex tracking has been broken for a while. Hoping that in time, UX polish will catch up. Dev is great and responsive to feedback though.
Honest question - why does it matter how long it’s been if it still works (assuming that it does)? I see this kind of comment a lot online and I’ve always wondered… like, I use Doppler for offline music on my phone. There hasn’t been a new version since like 2023 and the last update was like a year ago but it still works as it should, so I don’t really see an issue. If it broke somehow and it wasn’t updated, that would definitely be a problem but the lack of continuous updates doesn’t trouble me in the least. So yeah, I’m just curious. If anybody wants to enlighten me, I’m here to learn
Yeah fair question. Personally theres been an open request for integrating BetterDisplay for a while now and it hasnt happened. Outside of this, I dont have any major complaints but there are two features that have been on the roadmap for a while now that I'd love to have - editing corner radius and shadow weight, horizontal gestures for media control
If you want an open source app Atoll is the bset. Rest my favourites are Droppy and Alcove.
I used to be a fellow boring notch user, until I found Atoll. It is also free (unlike alcove) while offering amazing UI and a great amount of features (eg lock screen widgets, calendar notifications in the notch, built in timer in the notch alongside many others). I highly recommend it, def one of my fav apps on my Mac right now.
its built on top of boringnotch so that is interesting, but I dont like the trend of modern apps to add a bunch of random functionality - probably because its easy to say "Claude build x feature". So my default stance is skepticism unfortunately. Plus its a kid building atoll with no real track record. For apps like these that are always on and require a bunch of permissions, its not worth the risk
Droppy has been my favorite so far, and I don’t even use half of the features. Replaces boring notch as well as dropover for me. It has a cool feature that lets you drop a file in and share it, but I do wish it had more file sharing providers. My work uses OneDrive, so it would be a little weird for me to start sharing out files from a service that no one knows.
Come to alcove my brotha.
The UI of Alcove is what drove me to it and I highly recommend. Developer is always updating the app, and in the settings I saw "File Tray" coming soon which I imagine will allow us to use it to move files around in the notch.
If you really want to move to another open source one similar to Boring Notch, I'd suggest moving to Atoll (https://github.com/Ebullioscopic/Atoll), I have been using it since January, and it has been updated quite a lot, especially being built on Boring.Notch, it seems like a fair alternative. Also it has a ton of third party integrations like BetterDisplay, Lunar, Notion Calendar, Fantastical, Amazon Music and stuff like that
I just tried Atoll after reading this thread. I bought Alcove and feel it's the most polished, but lacks a lot of customizability (for example, can only show it on the main display). I bought Droppy, but it had some bugs and seemed to focus on tons of features, but poor implementation of each. Then I found Better Notch, and it's what I've used the longest so far. Today I found Atoll, and it's the best fit for me by far. I especially like that it is ideally suited to non-notch displays (I use a Mac Mini with 3 displays). It's also very customizable. Anyway thanks for introducing me to Atoll.
Alcove can be shown on all displays since the most recent update FYI, or even a specific one.
Once Docky implements a file shelf I’m fully dropping BoringNotch tbh. That’s the only thing stopping me rn.
It’s simple and does what I need it to do. Not sure I need more.
Don’t fix what is working already
Does it work on macOS Tahoe? Are there any features that are missing or broken? If no, why should it be updated?
I wouldn't move just because of no updates, if it works and you're happy, why moving?
Did you try to contact the developer?
I have been using MacNotch and been enjoying it so far. Not sure how good it is compared to other apps though.