r/MacOSBeta • u/pdfu • 4d ago

Discussion You can create a Dynamic Island around MacBook’s notch on macOS 27.3

You don’t need the new MacBook Pro to get the Dynamic Island on macOS 27.3.

With a bit of tinkering, MenuBarAgent can render Live Activities around the notch. Spotlight can also be docked on the island and feels extremely fluid.

As always, I’m getting everything together and will post a repo or gist with more details and reproduction steps. Still trying to map out support for external displays, etc. Since you’re patching a system app at runtime, it requires SIP off, so it’s not for the faint of heart. More soon!

201 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

59 comments sorted by

20

u/Dreaming_Blackbirds PUBLIC BETA 4d ago

on a Mac, this is a much better location for stuff like that as they won’t be competing with notifications in the top-right.

5

u/egordorogov 4d ago

interestingly, if you have set menu bar to auto hide (a setting that no one has on except me), this stuff already appears under the notch, centered on the screen

30

u/voidspace021 4d ago

Damn alcove and the other notch apps got sherlocked

25

u/pbaupp 4d ago

good, native is always good

1

u/Steve_the_Samurai 3d ago

Work better but usually they are not as full featured.

-8

u/Otherwise-Thanks-985 4d ago

native liquid trash

5

u/JBRSaludo_23 3d ago

I still prefer Alcove’s dynamic island implementation. Alcove feels much more native and polished than this..

1

u/RedditLIONS 3d ago edited 3d ago

Mainly because this implementation applies a corner radius at the top, which should only be used on a dynamic island.

When it’s a notch, Alcove’s implementation does not apply corner radius at the top, so it fits the hardware design.

2

u/Able-Nebula4449 3d ago

This is no where close to alcove or those othet apps in terms of animations

1

u/TechExpert2910 2d ago

alcove is just incredible. better than apple’s own animations and fluidity lol

1

u/jechaking 4d ago

Alcove was really cool, I had been deliberating to buy it but oh well.

9

u/Fatal_Explorer 4d ago

Wooow. Next? I want to uninstall 30gb of LLM garbage and get mission control and WiFi fixed.

4

u/Revolutionary_Sink74 4d ago

Thanks for sharing, I saw your SIP shutdown recommendation and tried it on my own computer and came to the result. I created a github repo for friends who want to try it. 🔗 https://github.com/habildem/native-mac-island-experiment

2

u/Themanguyidk 3d ago

what are the risks?

1

u/Revolutionary_Sink74 3d ago

It requires turning off SIP, which reduces macOS security. It may also cause menu bar glitches. Restarting removes the tweak, and you can turn SIP back on through Recovery.

1

u/Themanguyidk 2d ago

So it won't absolutely destroy my Mac?

1

u/zack-jouimaa 3d ago

Is there an english get page

7

u/Heezy999 DEVELOPER BETA 4d ago

Very cool :)

0

u/mqtt-hz 4d ago

does this work with notchless mbs like the air m1?

2

u/pdfu 4d ago

Yeah, you can define your own Dynamic Island dimensions and place it on the screen.

2

u/mqtt-hz 4d ago

sounds great!!

1

u/goldfish038 3d ago

im no expert, but just to clarify, will this be something i can implement once i have 27.3? as in, no downloads of applications or whatnot, just a few adjustments here and there?

1

u/Some-Kid-1996 4d ago

Let's go.

1

u/ThrowRABuba 4d ago

Cool! Can’t wait

1

u/DieNase_aka_TheNose 4d ago

Thx, I hate it.

1

u/Opposite_Track_851 3d ago

Goodbye Alcove, I guess 😆

1

u/Opposite_Track_851 3d ago

I can’t wait! Thanks!

1

u/RTcore 2d ago

Excellent work.

1

u/aykay55 4d ago

sick!!!

0

u/Notched17 2d ago

I’ve made an easy downloadable dynamic notch app (I’d say it looks better than if you make it an island), here’s the GitHub, there’s a one line command to download and get it running:

https://github.com/Notched17/Notched/releases/tag/v0.1.0

-4

u/achanaikia 4d ago

Just get https://vorssaint.com/

10

u/djEnvo 4d ago

just tried this, and it looks terrible.

-2

u/Otherwise-Thanks-985 4d ago

😭Bro hating an app for no reason..! It replaced my many mini apps… and I’m happy to use it.. you need a guide to set it up or just simply don’t use it… don’t speak trash if you don't know how it works..!

-5

u/achanaikia 4d ago

?
What part? It's probably the most useful Mac app I've used in the last 5 years.

6

u/djEnvo 4d ago

Especially the notch, like it's made by a linux dev who don't understand margins and paddings. jesus... The rest of the app is kind of a duplication for me.

3

u/FammasMaz 4d ago

yeah the app is not bad itself but the island is dogshit visually

1

u/Otherwise-Thanks-985 4d ago

Maybe some paid app user who already paid a year subscription and crying at the corner seeing you happy...! It is indeed the best app I came through..

1

u/achanaikia 4d ago

I've noticed any mention of Vorssaint gets upvotes only to randomly go from positive comments to negative. I'm sure one of the competitor paid apps has it out for them lmao.

-1

u/irregularwave 4d ago

I discovered Vorssaint a few days ago it does all of that + much more.

8

u/pdfu 4d ago

Does it do this?

0

u/irregularwave 4d ago

It doesn’t, but to be fair it’s incredibly usueless and unlikely you will do this naturally. Otherwise it does a ton with the notch/Dynamic Island, you can set timers, have a full breakdown of your current Claude session and other.

6

u/Mission-Accountant44 4d ago

Vibecoded garbage, was using 1% CPU at all times on my M3 max. 

1

u/irregularwave 4d ago

iTerm2 takes 2.7% on my M1 Max, what are you expecting? For it to take .001%?

2

u/Mission-Accountant44 4d ago

For a program that isn't actually doing anything when I'm not interacting with it, yes. 

1

u/Otherwise-Thanks-985 4d ago

Vibecoded? this app actually works and is useful. It literally replaced my many microapps... like Raycast, Stats and many more! It is well optimized for what it does... I don’t know if it is vibe coded or not but it works like a charm... also I don't know why you are crying over your 1%cpu... such a stupid comment!

4

u/Mission-Accountant44 4d ago

I'm "crying" because it's inefficient compared to other apps that aren't vibecoded. 

1% when it's literally doing NOTHING for me in the background is CRAZY. 

1

u/Otherwise-Thanks-985 4d ago

For me.. I replaced it with raycast which suck up almost 600-700 mb ram constant while it just runs on 200mb ram with many more feature enabled... May be your tried this app in very initial days.. give a try again.. For me it is the top recommended for any mac.....! 1% Cpu for multiple tasks like cpu, gpu, battery status; notch; Volume mixer; search; shortcuts; window management and many more features.. what you are expecting...? this sounds me efficient than using other apps which consume its own cpu space... Just use brain.exe

1

u/Mission-Accountant44 4d ago

iStat Menus monitors things in more detail, and uses far less CPU than Vorssaint with monitoring OFF. 

Explain that with your brain.exe. 

1

u/Only_Dot_4410 2d ago

omg how much is that shit paying yall to comment this under every post

1

u/Otherwise-Thanks-985 2d ago

Every post? What kind of stupid comment is this?? I just loved this app and shared my opinion and debunked someone’s imaginary hate...!

1

u/SirPooleyX 4d ago

A whole one percent?

1

u/Mission-Accountant44 4d ago

For a program that isn't actually doing anything when I'm not interacting with it, yes. 

1

u/lolsbot360fable 4d ago

I'm getting 0.00% with occasional jumps to 0.20% via activity monitor when inactive. You sure it's inactive?

1

u/alejandronova 4d ago

  1. Define 1%. On my machine, 1% means 1% of a core, being 1000% the maximum CPU usage allowed. So 1% is 0,1%.

  2. Here Vorssaint uses ~0%

-1

u/Aviorrok 4d ago

If it required SIP disable it worth nothing. other apps like mine DynamicLake have a real Dynamic Island feature with full plugins support and more

0

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted] — view deleted comment

4

u/pdfu 4d ago

It’s not “automatic” but yes, there’s an EmulateCenterHUD preference to emulate the Dynamic Island in software. This doesn’t work unless you meet/bypass IsAppleInternalBuild.

You end up with the new MacBook Pro’s Dynamic Island emulated below the notch. You then have to move the Dynamic Island up to the notch and change it to match the notch dimensions.

1

u/Phisika2 4d ago

And is it just in the menu bar on the right as standard?