# What Is the MacBook Notch For? Uses, Fixes and Hiding It > The MacBook notch holds the FaceTime camera and its green light. Why menu bar icons hide behind it, the built-in fixes, how to hide it and how to use the space. By Aditya Jaiswal, founder of NotchOwl. Published 2026-11-08, updated 2026-11-08. Canonical URL: https://www.notchowl.com/blog/what-is-the-macbook-notch-for The notch is the black cutout at the top center of the screen on recent MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models. It looks like wasted space, and it sometimes swallows your menu bar icons, but it has a job. This guide covers what the notch holds, why icons disappear behind it, the fixes built into macOS, apps that hide it, and apps that put the space to use. ## What the MacBook notch holds The notch is what Apple calls the camera housing. It holds the built-in FaceTime camera and the green indicator light that glows whenever the camera is on. Unlike the notch on older iPhones, the MacBook notch holds no Face ID sensors. You sign in to a Mac with Touch ID or a password. Apple introduced the notch on the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro in October 2021. Apple’s explanation at the time was that the display grew upward around the camera, the menu bar moved into the new strip beside it, and apps kept a full 16:10 area below. The MacBook Air got the same design with the M2 model in 2022. Table: The camera inside the notch, by MacBook model (from Apple’s technical specifications) | MacBook model | Camera in the notch | | --- | --- | | MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch (2021) | 1080p FaceTime HD camera | | MacBook Air 13-inch with M2 (2022) | 1080p FaceTime HD camera | | MacBook Pro 14-inch with M4 (2024) | 12MP Center Stage camera with Desk View | | MacBook Air 13-inch with M4 (2025) | 12MP Center Stage camera with Desk View | | Current MacBook Pro with Liquid Retina XDR (M6, M5 Pro, M5 Max) and MacBook Air (M5) | 12MP Center Stage camera with Desk View | One new model breaks the pattern. The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, on sale since November 6, 2026, has Apple’s Dynamic Island at the top of the screen in place of a notch. [Dynamic Island for Mac](/blog/dynamic-island-for-mac) explains what it does and what other Macs get. ## Why menu bar icons hide behind the notch The menu bar runs along both sides of the camera: the current app’s menus on the left, status icons such as Wi-Fi, battery and third-party apps on the right. macOS does not wrap or scroll the menu bar. When an app has many menus, or you have many status icons, the items that would reach the middle are drawn under the camera, where you can’t see or click them. Apple’s own support article acknowledges that menu bar items can end up behind the camera housing. The fixes below range from one checkbox to a dedicated app. ## Built-in ways to fix it ### Scale an app to fit below the camera For an app whose menus run under the notch, macOS has a per-app setting. Apple’s steps: 1. Quit the app. 2. In Finder, click Applications in the sidebar and select the app. 3. Choose File › Get Info, or press Command-I. 4. Select **Scale to fit below built-in camera**. The app then uses only the area below the camera, and other open apps that share that space move below it too until you quit the scaled app. The checkbox appears only for apps that need it: once a developer updates an app for the notch, the option disappears from Get Info. ### Turn off icons you don’t need On macOS 26 Tahoe and later, open System Settings › Menu Bar. Under **Allow in the Menu Bar**, switch off third-party apps whose icons you rarely use. Under **Menu Bar Controls**, choose which system items appear. Fewer icons means fewer of them pushed under the camera. ### Move the important icons to the right Hold Command and drag a menu bar icon to move it. Status icons fill in from the right edge, so the ones nearest the notch are the first to disappear. Put the icons you use most at the far right. ## Menu bar managers for hidden icons - **Bartender** by Applause Group collapses icons you don’t need into a hidden section. Bartender’s “Beat the notch” feature hides items that would otherwise land behind the notch and brings them back with a click or a hotkey. Bartender 7 is built for macOS 27, Bartender 6 covers macOS 26, and there is a 4-week trial: [macbartender.com](https://www.macbartender.com). - **Hidden Bar** is free and open source (MIT). Hidden Bar puts an arrow in the menu bar that hides the icons to its left; version 1.11.1 shipped in September 2026 and needs macOS 13 or later. Get it from [GitHub](https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden) or Homebrew, since the Mac App Store copy is older. - **Ice** is a popular free, open-source manager (GPL-3.0), but its last stable release, 0.11.12, is from October 2024. Check that Ice works on your macOS version before relying on it: [github.com/jordanbaird/Ice](https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice). ## How to hide the MacBook notch If the notch bothers you visually, TopNotch hides it. TopNotch, a free app from MTW, the team behind CleanShot, turns the menu bar black so the notch blends into it. TopNotch runs in the background, follows wallpaper changes, supports Dynamic Desktop wallpapers and works across multiple displays and Spaces, on macOS 11 or later: [topnotch.app](https://topnotch.app). TopNotch is cosmetic only. Menu bar items still disappear behind the camera, so pair it with one of the fixes above if icons are the real problem. ## How to use the notch on a Mac Instead of hiding the notch, notch apps put a panel behind it that opens when you hover over it. The panel can hold music controls, a file tray, a calendar or a to-do list, and it grows into a small alert when something happens. I make NotchOwl, one of these apps. NotchOwl puts today’s tasks, a focus timer, a daily notepad and today’s Calendar events behind the notch, and opens it with a chime when a task’s reminder comes due. A running focus timer sits beside the notch as a small pill, so the space shows something useful even when NotchOwl is closed. NotchOwl costs $9 once for up to 3 Macs and needs an Apple silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later; you can [download it here](/download). NotchOwl has no music controls or file shelf, though. For media and file drops, NotchNook, Boring Notch (free and open source) and Droppy are better fits. [The best notch apps for Mac](/blog/best-notch-apps-for-mac) compares ten of them by price and purpose. No notch at all? Some of these apps also work on external displays; see [how to get a notch on an external monitor](/blog/notch-on-external-monitor). > The MacBook notch is the camera housing: it holds the FaceTime camera and its green indicator light, and the menu bar runs around it on both sides. ## Frequently asked questions ### Why does my MacBook have a notch? The notch holds the built-in FaceTime camera. Apple grew the display up around the camera in 2021 so the menu bar could move into the strip beside it, leaving a full 16:10 area below for apps. ### Does the MacBook notch have Face ID? No. The MacBook notch holds the camera and the green light that shows when the camera is on, not Face ID sensors. You sign in to a Mac with Touch ID or a password. ### How do I see menu bar icons hidden behind the notch? Turn off icons you don’t need in System Settings › Menu Bar (macOS 26 and later), Command-drag the icons you use most to the far right, or use a menu bar manager such as Bartender or Hidden Bar. ### Can you hide the notch on a MacBook? Yes, visually. TopNotch, a free app from the team behind CleanShot, turns the menu bar black so the notch blends into it. For a single app, the Get Info option Scale to fit below built-in camera keeps that app below the camera. ### Which MacBooks have a notch? The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2021 on, and the MacBook Air from the M2 model (2022) on. The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, released in November 2026, has Apple’s Dynamic Island instead.