Add a touch of whimsy to your MacBook Pro's notch this holiday season

MacBook Pro 2021 Review (Image credit: Bryan M. Wolfe / iMore)

What you need to know

It's an app that turns your MacBook Pro's notch into something much cooler.
Multiple effects are available and you should have installed this thing by now.
Notchmeister is free and in the App Store today.

If you have a new MacBook Pro with a notch you can now add a touch of whimsy to proceedings thanks to this free app from The Iconfactory. Dubbed Notchmeister, the macOS app does one thing and one thing only — bring a smile to your face.

Actually, it does more than that. With Notchmeister installed you can move your mouse around your MacBook Pro's notch and have one of a few different effects take place — and yes, there's a festive one!

Notchmeister Screenshot (Image credit: The Iconfactory)

Have you ever wondered what happens to your mouse while it's travelling underneath the notch? Notchmeister answers that question with exciting effects that take your Mac to a whole new dimension:⁕ Glow - A cursor will light your way.⁕ Cylon - By your command.⁕ Plasma Leak - Your mouse can break down the magnetic containment field that keeps the M1's power in check!⁕ Festive - Let your Mac celebrate the holidays the best way it can—in binary.⁕ Nano Radar - Our patented invention lets you know exactly where your mouse has gone.

Pretty cool, right? This might just be the best Mac app I've seen in a while and it doesn't actually do anything useful. That's what attracted many of us to the Mac years ago — a touch of whimsy that has been lacking all too much in recent years. Now, thanks to the folks at The Iconfactory, you can have a little bit of it where your screen should be!

Go download Notchmeister for free right now (opens in new tab).

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.