The notch and the island

One surface, two shapes. Droppy either grows out of the hardware notch or floats as a Dynamic Island pill, and you choose which per display. It opens when you hover or drag, and holds your widgets.

How you interact with it

  • Hover opens the notch. Whether hovering is enough on your main Mac and on external displays is set under Auto-expand in Settings, General, Expanded notch.
  • Drag onto it and it opens to take the drop, wherever the drag started.
  • Click runs whatever you set under On notch click in Settings, Media, Gestures.
  • Two-finger swipe moves between the notch's pages and Now Playing, and scrubs inside the media controls. Turn gestures on or off under Settings, General, Expanded notch, Gestures.
  • Right-click opens Settings, or hides the surface, depending on what you set under Settings, Accessibility.

Pages and navigation

The open notch has three pages: Home, Tray and Widgets. Tray holds the file tray when it appears in the notch. The page buttons sit below the notch and can be hidden with Show navigation, in which case you move between pages with a two-finger swipe instead. The tray button can also be set to appear only while files are actually waiting.

Home widgets

Any Droplet with a notch widget can be placed on the Home page, alone or beside another one. Widgets available today cover files, weather, media, notifications, Stay Awake, Termi-Notch, Pomodoro, camera, Voice Transcribe, Calendar, Notes, Obsidian, Thaw, Agents, Mechey, clipboard, System Stats, Text Capture and Audio Control.

Widgets that are mostly a text field, meaning Notes, Obsidian and Termi-Notch, take keyboard focus when you open them on their own, so the cursor is already in the field. Widgets that are not text fields never steal focus.

Arrange them under Settings, General, Widgets.

Home widgetsShows your current layout. Its button opens the notch itself so you can add, remove or rearrange up to four widgets.
Show widgets pageAdds the Widgets button below the notch and its page of widget icons.
Widget iconsRearranges the icons on the Widgets page.
FavoritesPins up to four widgets, apps or shortcuts beside the navigation bar for one-tap access.

Timing and behaviour

How the notch opens and closes is set under Settings, General, Expanded notch.

Open the notchWhether the notch opens at all, for widgets and files alike.
Size when openHow much room the open notch takes.
Auto-collapseCloses the notch on its own once the pointer leaves it, after a delay you choose.
Auto-expandOpens the notch when you hover it, without a click. Expand on picks the main Mac, external displays or both, and Expand delay sets how long you hover first.
Animation speedMakes the notch and island open and close faster or slower.

Shape, size and appearance

Under Settings, Theming you pick the surface style for notched displays and for notchless displays independently, so a MacBook can use the notch while the monitor beside it uses the island. Width and height for both shapes are adjustable there too, along with island position.

Highlight colorTints Droppy's accents. Separate colors are available for the media player text, the lock screen widget text, and the volume and brightness slider fills.
Window tintGives Droppy's windows an opaque backing instead of glass, so text stays legible on a dark wallpaper.

External displays and fullscreen

Show on external displays, Per-display visibility, Hide physical notch and Hide on fullscreen are under Settings, General, Visibility.

Hide physical notchDraws a black bar over the hardware notch so the whole strip reads as one shape.
Per-display visibilityChoose exactly which connected displays show the notch or island.
Show on external displaysNever keeps Droppy on the built-in screen only, When active shows it on a monitor while something is on it, and Always keeps it there at rest too.
Hide on fullscreenHide the notch or island while an app is fullscreen. To hide only Now Playing, use Hide media in fullscreen under Settings, Media instead.
Hide in Mission ControlTake the surface off every display while Mission Control or App Exposé is open.
Hold to revealKeep the surface hidden until you hold a modifier combination. Useful on a Mac where it would otherwise cover menu bar items.
Hide from screenshotsExclude the notch area from screenshots and screen recordings.