Your notch,
put to work.
Halo turns the MacBook notch into a home for music, timers, notes, files and alerts. Hover to peek, click to open, and it stays out of the way the rest of the time.
Everything a glance away.
Nothing when there's nothing to say.
Music, right under the notch.
- Now Playing from any app: Music, Spotify or a browser.
- Artwork, controls and a scrubber, with a waveform and a progress ring in the wings while it plays.
- Synced lyrics, and the current line just under the notch if you like.
A timer you can see.
- A countdown with a ring in the wings, so you always know how long is left.
- Your Focus status beside it.
- A notepad in the notch for the thing you need to remember. Open it with Control-Option-Command-N.
Batteries and weather, in rings.
- AirPods and Mac battery, the sound output, and volume per app.
- Local weather with air quality, sunrise and sunset.
- Volume and brightness show in the notch, external monitors included (DDC/CI).
Park it in the notch.
- Drag a file near the notch and it opens to catch it. Drag it out again when you need it.
- Claude Code and Codex tell you when they're done, waiting for you or failed.
- Click an alert to jump back to its terminal.
Widgets on the lock screen.
- A quiet line under the clock: battery, headphones, air quality, temperature and sunrise or sunset.
- Your timer, and a small Now Playing card with buttons that work.
- Turn it off in one click if you'd rather not.
The small things, handled.
Volume and brightness
The keys show a clean bar in the notch, for the built-in display and external monitors that support DDC/CI.
Keep Awake
Stop your Mac sleeping indefinitely, for an hour or two, or until a time you pick. A cup in the wings shows it's on.
Lights
The keyboard backlight, one slider away.
Fullscreen aware
Over fullscreen apps Halo stays as the bare notch. Only the volume bar and agent alerts still show.
Updates, if you want
Off until you turn it on: one window for updates to your apps and tools, from Homebrew, npm and the apps' own feeds.
A short walkthrough
The first launch shows you around: pick your modules, grant only the permissions you need, learn the shortcuts.
Only the parts
you want.
Every module can be switched off or moved in Customize Halo. Changes show in the notch right away, and a module that's off stops working entirely.
- Drag to reorder the tabs in the open notch.
- Turn off what you don't use, from lyrics to weather.
- Right-click the notch to get there.
Halo
Your phone,
one tap from the notch.
The Halo iPhone app talks straight to your Mac on your own Wi-Fi, encrypted end to end after you pair with a 6-digit code shown in the notch.
- Send photos, files, links and text to the Mac, and files back to the phone.
- Share the clipboard both ways.
- Control the music, start a timer or lock the Mac.
- Files land in Downloads and in the tray. No server, no account.
Stay awake, lid open or shut.
No separate app needed.
Keep your Mac from sleeping for a download, a build, a call or a server, for exactly as long as you choose. Turn on Closed Lid and it keeps running with the lid shut, too. Halo walks you through the one-time permission that needs, right in the app.
Choose how long
Right-click the notch › Keep Awake.
A small cup sits in the notch's wings while it's on.
Lid closed, too
Closed Lid keeps your Mac running with the screen shut, plugged into a display or not.
Always put back
Sleep comes back when the time runs out, when you quit, and even if Halo crashes.
Battery guard
Below 20% on battery, Closed Lid turns itself off.
Use it on a desk
A closed Mac in a bag stays awake and can get hot. Best plugged in.
No server.
Nothing collected.
No accounts, analytics, tracking or crash reports. What Halo reads stays on your Mac.
On your Mac
Notes, the tray and settings live in your own Library folder. The tray keeps file paths, never contents.
A few public services
Lyrics, artwork and weather come from public services, each asked only while its module is on.
Permissions when needed
Location is asked the first time you open Weather, or type a city instead. The key tap sees only volume and brightness keys.
Phone stays local
The iPhone link works on your own network, encrypted, with pairing keys in each device's Keychain.
Questions
Does Halo work on a Mac without a notch?
Halo is made for a MacBook with a notch. On other displays, like an external monitor, it draws a notch-shaped bar at the top of the screen instead.
Which Macs does it run on?
Macs with Apple silicon running macOS 26 or later.
Which music apps work?
Anything that shows up in macOS's Now Playing: Music, Spotify and browsers included. Lyrics come from lrclib.net when a song has them.
How do agent alerts work?
Claude Code and Codex hooks call a small script that hands each alert to Halo. If Halo isn't running, the script shows its own banner, so an alert is never lost. Alerts are off for new users until you turn them on.
Where do I get the iPhone app?
For now it's built from the Phone folder in Halo's repository. It pairs with your Mac on the same Wi-Fi.
Does Halo read my notifications?
No. It doesn't read system notifications at all. See the privacy policy for everything it does read.
What does it cost?
Nothing. Halo is free and open source under the MIT license.
Halo is almost ready.
It's in daily use and getting its last details polished. Until the download is up, you can build it from source.