Good questions,
honest answers.

Knotch is designed for MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models with a physical notch — that means any MacBook Pro from late 2021 onwards, and the M2 MacBook Air and later.

It will also run on older Macs and external displays without a notch, but the notch-area UI won't appear. The music controls, shelf, and other widgets still work normally.

Knotch requires macOS 13 Ventura or later. macOS 14 Sonoma and macOS 15 Sequoia are fully supported.

Knotch isn't notarized with Apple (that requires a paid Developer account). macOS Gatekeeper will block it on first launch.

To open it: right-click Knotch.app → Open → click Open in the dialog. You only need to do this once — after that it launches normally.

Alternatively, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway after the first blocked launch attempt.

Open Knotch settings and toggle Launch at Login. You can also add it manually via System Settings → General → Login Items.

Spotify and Apple Music are fully supported with album art, track info, playback controls, and a progress bar. YouTube Music support is also included.

Any other app that exposes a Now Playing media session to macOS will show basic track info in the notch, though controls may be limited.

Yes. When your screen locks, Knotch generates a gradient from the current track's album art and sets it as your desktop wallpaper — which macOS shows behind the lock screen UI. Your original wallpaper is restored the moment you unlock.

This is the only viable way to render content behind the macOS lock screen without system-level access. It's seamless in practice.

The Shelf lets you drag files into the notch panel and pick them up later in any app. Think of it as a persistent clipboard for files — useful when moving things between Finder windows or dragging attachments into apps.

Yes — open Knotch settings to toggle individual widgets on or off, choose which panels appear in the expanded view, and adjust behaviour like the lock screen gradient and hover sensitivity.

Knotch is built in pure Swift with energy usage as a first-class concern. Animations are throttled, album art blurs are cached as static snapshots and only regenerated on track changes, and the app idles at near-zero CPU when the notch is closed.

It won't show up meaningfully in your battery usage stats.

Typically under 80 MB. There's no Electron runtime, no web view, and no background network activity — just a native SwiftUI app doing exactly what you see.

No. Knotch has no servers, no analytics, no crash reporting, and no telemetry of any kind. Everything runs locally on your Mac. See the Privacy Policy for the full breakdown.

Knotch may request access to Calendars (to show today's events) and Automation (to control Spotify via AppleScript). Both are optional — you can decline and the rest of the app works fine.

No microphone, camera, contacts, location, or any other sensitive permission is ever requested.

Yes. The full source code is on GitHub. Every privacy and security claim is verifiable by reading the code.

Make sure Knotch is running (check the menu bar or Activity Monitor). If it is, try quitting and relaunching. On first run, macOS occasionally needs a moment to grant window-level access to the notch area.

If the issue persists, open Knotch settings and toggle the notch widget off and back on.

Knotch reads album art via AppleScript automation from the Spotify desktop app. Make sure you've granted Automation permission in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation and that Knotch has access to Spotify.

Spotify must be the desktop app — the web player isn't supported.

Quit Knotch, then drag Knotch.app to the Trash. To remove preferences too, run this in Terminal:

defaults delete com.seshyweshyy.Knotch

That's everything — no other files are written outside the app bundle and UserDefaults.