ClaudeNotch

Approve Claude Code without leaving your work.

ClaudeNotch puts every Claude Code permission prompt, question, and notification
right in your Mac's notch. Read the diff, allow or deny with one key, and stay in
your editor, no more tabbing back to the terminal every few seconds.

ClaudeNotch demo, approving Claude Code permissions from the notch

What is ClaudeNotch?

When you use Claude Code, it constantly stops to
ask permission, "Can I run this command?", "Can I edit this file?" Every prompt
pulls you back to the terminal and breaks your flow.

ClaudeNotch is a tiny macOS menu-bar app that surfaces those prompts in a
Dynamic-Island-style overlay at the top of your screen. The notch quietly
expands with the command (or a diff of the change), you click Allow or
Deny, or just tap a key, and your keyboard pops right back to where you
were. You never switch apps.

It runs entirely on your machine, talks to Claude Code through its official hook
system, and shows no Dock icon, just a small bell in your menu bar.

🎬 In motion

Start a session from the notch: drag a project folder onto the notch and a Claude Code session opens in that directory. No terminal, no cd.

Dragging a folder onto the notch to start a Claude Code session

A pet that reacts to your session: the mascot lives in the notch and animates around what Claude is doing.

The ClaudeNotch pet animating in the notch

Little moments of delight: playful touches that make the notch feel alive while you work.

✨ Features


🛡️ Permissions in the notch	When Claude wants to run a command or edit a file, the notch unfurls with Allow, Deny, and Always Allow. Resolve it and your keyboard jumps straight back to the terminal.
🟥🟩 See the diff first	Edit and Write requests show a red/green diff right inside the card, so you know exactly what's about to change.
⚠️ Guardrails for risky commands	Dangerous ones like `rm -rf`, `sudo`, and force-push get a red warning. Confirm them with Touch ID (or Face ID), or a press-and-hold button when Touch ID is off, so nothing irreversible slips through by accident.
💬 Deny with a reason	Not just no. Tap the note button on a prompt to tell Claude what to do instead (say "use ripgrep, not grep"), and it adapts rather than just stopping.
❓ Answer Claude's questions	`AskUserQuestion` prompts arrive as tappable options, with a type-your-own field for when none of them fit.
↩️ Reply when a task finishes	The "done" card has a Reply button that opens a composer pointed right at that session, so you can send a follow-up without switching windows.
⚡ Live activity + progress	While Claude works, the notch shows what it's doing right now (the active tool and its target) and a progress bar as it works through a task list.
📊 Context + cost meter	Each session shows how full Claude's context window is and a running cost estimate, so you get a heads-up before it pauses to compact.
💸 Spending caps + alerts	Set a budget per session and per day. As you near a cap the session's cost figure warms orange then red, and a card warns you at 80% and again at 100%, so a long run never quietly runs up a bill. (Costs are estimates from public pricing, so treat the caps as a guardrail.)
📈 Claude usage, broken down	A Claude Usage menu shows your tokens and estimated cost for today and the last 7 days, by model and by project (priciest repos first), plus a 7-day token sparkline and your prompt-cache savings.
🪟 Many sessions at once	Run several Claude sessions side by side. The notch tracks each one separately, with its own status, project, and latest reply.
✉️ Send a message from anywhere	Press ⌥⌘N to open a quick composer. Send a note to your running session, or start a fresh one in a recent project.
🕘 Activity history	Click the notch for a timeline of everything you've allowed, denied, or answered.
✅ Smart always-allow	Approve a tool for the whole session, or just one exact command. Your rules stick around between launches.
📁 Start Claude in any folder	Launch Claude Code in any project straight from the menu bar, or jump back into a recent one.
🐾 Pet Mode	The Claude mascot lives in your notch. While nothing is happening it peeks out, looks around, hangs off the corner, strolls along the edge, and naps after a quiet spell, then hops with sparkles when a task finishes. It watches your cursor and leans toward it, holds still to be petted, and boops when you click it. Boop it five times fast. It never appears over an active session or a card you're reading, it respects Reduce Motion, and the Pet Mode menu item turns it off.
🏷️ Personalise the notch title	Pick what the notch calls itself from the Notch Title menu, keep Claude, track the active project name, or type your own custom label. It updates live and sticks between launches.

🚀 Install

The easy way (recommended)

⬇ Download ClaudeNotch.dmg
Open the DMG and drag ClaudeNotch into Applications.
Double-click ClaudeNotch. macOS Sequoia 15 and later will block the
first launch because the app isn't notarized through Apple's paid Developer
program. Click Done on the warning, then open System Settings → Privacy
& Security, scroll to the Security section, and click Open Anyway next
to ClaudeNotch. You only do this once. (On macOS Sonoma and earlier you can
still right-click → Open to bypass.)
A small bell icon appears in your menu bar. Click it → Setup to
wire up the Claude Code hooks. Done!

💡 Skip the warning entirely: install with Homebrew (see below).
ClaudeNotch is ad-hoc signed (no Apple Developer ID at all), which macOS
treats more leniently than an unnotarized Developer ID app, Homebrew
casks in that tier launch straight away with no Gatekeeper prompt,
confirmed on a clean install with Gatekeeper and SIP both enabled.

Tip: To launch automatically on startup, click the menu-bar bell →
Launch at Login.

With Homebrew

One line:

brew install --cask rawsun007/tap/claudenotch

Build from source (for developers)

Click to expand

Requires macOS 13+, Swift 5.9+ (xcode-select --install), and jq (brew install jq).

git clone https://github.com/rawsun007/claude-notch.git
cd claude-notch
./build.sh        # produces ClaudeNotch.app
./install.sh      # copies to /Applications, wires Claude Code hooks, launches

Want your macOS permission grants (Accessibility) to survive every rebuild? Run
this once before building, it creates a stable self-signed identity so the app's
signature stops changing:

./tools/make-signing-cert.sh

🎮 Try it in 30 seconds

After installing, you don't even need Claude Code to see it work:

Click the menu-bar bell → Demo: tool permission. The notch should expand
with a sample command and Allow / Deny buttons.

Then, with a real session:

Open Claude Code in any project.
Ask it to run a command, write a file, or edit something.
The notch expands at the top of your screen with the details and buttons.
Whatever you click is what Claude does next, no need to switch back.

ClaudeNotch surfaces the prompts that matter: command runs, file writes and
edits, plan approvals, to-do updates, and AskUserQuestion. Quiet tools like
searching files use Claude Code's normal flow, so you're not pestered for every
little thing. And if ClaudeNotch isn't running, Claude Code just shows its own
prompt as usual, so nothing breaks.

⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
Enter	Allow the current permission (or confirm the focused card)
Esc	Deny / dismiss the current card
⌥⌘N	Open the quick message composer from anywhere
⌘↩	Send the message in the composer (plain Enter inserts a newline)

Keyboard control needs macOS Accessibility permission (System Settings →
Privacy & Security → Accessibility). The app will prompt you the first time.

🔒 Privacy

Everything stays on your machine. ClaudeNotch talks to Claude Code over a
localhost-only connection (127.0.0.1) and never sends your prompts,
commands, or code anywhere. No accounts, no telemetry, no servers.

🧠 How it works

Claude Code  ──▶  PreToolUse hook  ──▶  POST /permission  ──▶  ClaudeNotch
                                                                    │
                                                          notch shows the card
                                                                    │
                                                            you click Allow
                                                                    │
                                          {"decision":"allow"}  ◀───┘
                                                    │
                                                    ▼
                                          Claude Code runs the tool

The hook holds the connection open while it waits for your click. If anything
goes wrong, app not running, timeout, missing dependency, it safely falls back
to Claude Code's own prompt, so there's no way to get stuck.

❓ FAQ

Is it free?
Yes, free for personal and any noncommercial use, and the full source lives right
here on GitHub. Commercial use isn't allowed without permission, if you want to
sell it or make money from it, ask me first.

Why does macOS warn me on first open?
It isn't notarized through Apple's paid program yet. Right-click the app → Open
once, and you're set from then on.

Does it send my data anywhere?
No. Everything runs locally over a localhost hook. Nothing leaves your machine.

Which AI tools does it support?
Claude Code today. Support for more agents may come as the project grows.

Can I uninstall the hooks?
Yes, your settings.json is backed up during setup, and there's an uninstall
script (below) to remove everything cleanly.

🧹 Uninstall

~/.claudenotch/bin/uninstall-hooks.sh        # unwire from Claude Code
rm -rf /Applications/ClaudeNotch.app ~/.claudenotch

🛠️ For the curious: project layout

Click to expand

Sources/ClaudeNotch/
  main.swift                       : boots as a menu-bar accessory app (no Dock)
  AppDelegate.swift                : wires window, menu bar, HTTP server, hotkey
  AppState.swift                   : app state, live sessions, frontmost tracking
  NotchView.swift                  : the SwiftUI notch UI + animations
  NotchShape.swift                 : the concave "Dynamic Island" shape
  NotchWindowController.swift      : borderless panel that follows your screen
  KeyboardMonitor.swift            : Enter/Esc handling without stealing focus
  GlobalHotkey.swift               : the ⌥⌘N composer shortcut
  MouseTracker.swift               : hover detection over the notch
  EventServer.swift                : localhost HTTP server + blocking permission
  ClaudeUsageReader.swift          : context + cost meter from session transcripts
  ToolPreviewParser.swift          : diff/danger preview for a tool call
  BiometricAuth.swift              : Touch ID / Face ID confirm for dangerous commands
  MenuBarController.swift          : the menu-bar bell and its menu
  HookInstaller.swift              : wires/unwires Claude Code hooks in-app
  TerminalAutomator.swift          : types into your session + "Start Claude in folder"
  OnboardingView.swift             : first-run setup flow
  OnboardingState.swift            : permission checks for onboarding
  OnboardingWindowController.swift : the onboarding window
  UpdateChecker.swift              : checks GitHub for new releases
  Persistence.swift                : saves your always-allow rules, history & stats

bin/                          : the Claude Code hook scripts
build.sh                      : builds ClaudeNotch.app
install.sh                    : installs to /Applications + wires hooks
tools/                        : DMG builder, icon generators, signing cert, releaser

Localhost endpoints (for tinkering):

Endpoint	What it does
`POST /permission`	Blocks until you click; returns `{"decision":"allow\|deny\|ask","reason":"…"}`
`POST /question`	Blocks until you answer; returns your picks (or a typed answer)
`POST /notification`	Sticky orange "needs your input" card
`POST /stop`	Sticky green "task done" card
`POST /activity`	Updates the live "what Claude's doing" strip
`POST /prompt`	Records your prompt and marks the session thinking
`POST /task`	Task created/completed, for the per-session progress meter
`POST /sessionend`	Drops a finished session from the notch
`POST /pretool`	Brief blue thinking pulse
`POST /ping`	Liveness check

👋 Made by Roshan Ramani

If ClaudeNotch saves you a few context switches, a ⭐ on the repo means a lot.

Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue, feedback welcome.

📄 License

Free to use, modify, and share for personal, educational, and other noncommercial
purposes. Commercial use is not permitted without a separate license, if you'd
like to use ClaudeNotch commercially or build a paid product on it, please
reach out first. See
LICENSE for full terms.

_{ClaudeNotch, a Dynamic Island / notch overlay for Claude Code on macOS · permission prompts, diffs & notifications in your menu bar · Swift · noncommercial & source-available}

ClaudeNotch

Approve Claude Code without leaving your work.

What is ClaudeNotch?

🎬 In motion

✨ Features

🚀 Install

The easy way (recommended)

With Homebrew

Build from source (for developers)

🎮 Try it in 30 seconds

⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts

🔒 Privacy

🧠 How it works

❓ FAQ

🧹 Uninstall

🛠️ For the curious: project layout

👋 Made by Roshan Ramani

📄 License

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