Live activities for the MacBook notch. Music, calendar, HUDs, battery, headphones and a file tray, all living around the notch instead of cluttering your screen.
Download the latest version · Buy a license
- Now Playing: artwork and a live equalizer next to the notch that follows the actual bass, mids and highs. Hover for a player with scrubbing. Works with Music, Spotify, browsers and anything that reports Now Playing.
- Calendar: today's and tomorrow's events when nothing plays. Pick which calendars show up, click an event to open it, Join a Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex or FaceTime call right from the notch, and get a heads-up before it starts.
- HUDs: replaces the volume and brightness HUD (hold ⇧⌥ for finer steps). Shows volume changed from Control Center or AirPods too, and which output you switched to (speakers, AirPlay, display).
- Battery: charging, low battery, Low Power Mode
- Headphones: connect and disconnect, AirPods and Beats battery
- File Tray: drop files on the notch, drag them out later
- Lock screen: unlock animation, lock and unlock sounds
- Gestures: swipe sideways on the notch to skip tracks, down to open, up to close
- Integrations: other apps can post to the notch through
nika://links (see below)
- macOS 14 Sonoma or newer (live equalizer needs 14.2)
- Apple Silicon Mac. Built for the notch, but works on Macs without one too.
Paste this into Terminal. It downloads the latest version into Applications and opens it:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/greeenos/nika/main/install.sh | shOr by hand:
- Download
Nika.dmgfrom Releases, open it and drag Nika into Applications. - Open Nika. macOS says it can't verify the developer, because Nika isn't distributed through Apple. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway. Only needed once.
Then enter the license key from your purchase email and click Activate.
Nika updates itself: when a new version is out, it downloads it from this page, checks that it's signed by the same developer as the version you have, installs it and restarts in a second. Your settings and permissions stay. You can also check in Settings → About.
Nika asks only when a feature needs it, and everything is optional:
| Permission | Used for |
|---|---|
| Accessibility | Replacing the volume and brightness HUD |
| Calendars | Showing your events |
| Audio Capture | The live equalizer. Audio is only measured, never recorded or stored. |
| Bluetooth | Headphones and their battery |
- Hover or click the notch to open it.
- Double-click or right-click the notch for Settings and Quit. Nika has no menu bar icon by default; you can turn one on in Settings → General. Opening Nika again from Applications also brings up Settings.
- Drag files onto the notch to keep them in the tray.
Anything that can open a link can talk to the notch: Shortcuts (Open URLs), Raycast, Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, scripts, cron jobs.
open "nika://show?icon=checkmark.circle.fill&title=Build%20done&value=2m%2014s&color=green"
open "nika://show?icon=arrow.down.circle.fill&title=Download&progress=0.6&color=blue"
open "nika://settings"Parameters for show:
| Parameter | Meaning |
|---|---|
icon |
Any SF Symbol name |
title |
Text left of the notch |
value |
Text right of the notch |
progress |
0 to 1, draws a progress bar |
color |
red, orange, yellow, green, mint, teal, cyan, blue, indigo, purple, pink, gray, white or a hex code like ff8800 |
duration |
Seconds to stay visible (0.5 to 30) |
Remember to URL-encode spaces as %20.
A key works on a limited number of your own Macs. To move it to a new Mac, click Deactivate This Mac in Settings → License on the old one first.
Nika checks the key with the license server once a day and keeps working offline for 14 days.
Nika collects nothing. The only network request is the license check to api.lemonsqueezy.com, which sends your license key and your Mac's name.
Found a bug or want a feature? Open an issue.