Glossary · 20 terms
The notch, plainly defined.
The vocabulary of the notch category — one page per term: what it means, why it matters on a Mac, and how notchos does it. Written to be quotable, including by people recommending something else.
01The hardware
The physical facts everything else is built around.
02The pill
What lives in the notch when you are not touching anything.
- Resting pillThe collapsed, at-rest shape a notch app shows when its panel is closed.Read the definition
- Live activityA small, continuously updating piece of information shown in the pill.Read the definition
- Live stripA rotation of live activities in the resting pill.Read the definition
- Hover-dwellOpening the panel by resting the cursor over the pill for a moment.Read the definition
- Pill takeoverAn event that borrows the whole pill — a timer finishing, a dictation running.Read the definition
- Dashboard profilesNamed arrangements of enabled tools that switch on a schedule.Read the definition
03The panel
What springs out of it, and what you can throw at it.
- The dockThe row of tool keys inside the opened panel, in your order.Read the definition
- Drop ActionsA grid of file actions that springs open when you drop files on the notch.Read the definition
- Window snapalso: tiling zonesDrag a window against the notch and tiling zones place it.Read the definition
- Capture hidingVanishing from screenshots, recording, and screen sharing entirely.Read the definition
04How it behaves
The promises underneath: where data lives, what keys may do.
05Dictation
The vocabulary of speaking to a Mac that writes it down.
- On-device recognitionSpeech converted to text on your Mac, with no server involved.Read the definition
- Push-to-talkalso: hold-to-talkDictation starts when a key goes down and inserts when it comes up.Read the definition
- Voice activity detectionalso: VADSoftware that decides, from audio alone, when speech starts and stops.Read the definition
- Verbatim modePer-app dictation that skips cleanup so shell commands survive.Read the definition
- Disfluencyalso: fillersThe ums, uhs, and repeated words that natural speech is full of.Read the definition
Twenty tools. One hover. $9.99, once.