What has shipped

The bars beside the music now take their colors from the cover, left to right, and a black-and-white cover no longer turns them purple. A meeting's start time fits beside the notch.

Improved

• The equalizer reads the cover from left to right. Each bar takes its color from its part of the middle of the artwork, so the row beside the cover runs the way the cover does.
• The equalizer stays visible under play and pause. Pointing at the bars on a closed island still brings up the button, but the bars dim behind it rather than disappearing.

Fixed

• A black-and-white cover no longer gives the music a color it does not have. Gray artwork, and a site's icon when music plays in a browser, now come out as gray and white.
• A meeting's start time is no longer cut off beside the notch. It shows as "12:30" in slightly smaller type; the day view still gives the full time, AM or PM included.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac without one gets a floating island on the main display.

Known limitations

• The lean at the end of a range needs Accessibility. Reaching the end of the volume or brightness no longer moves the island on its own, and the press after it is only visible to Isleta with that permission granted. The reading itself, and the bar filling and emptying, work either way.
• A muted Mac's bar cannot be dragged. It is drawn at nothing whatever the volume behind it is, so pressing it opens the island instead. Unmute first.
• You cannot see who is calling. macOS does not let apps outside Apple read that, or answer for you. Isleta shows that a call is happening and nothing more.
• Weather needs your location, or a city you type. Isleta asks for neither until you use it.
• A connected device's battery is read once, when it connects. It does not tick down as you wear them, and most non-Apple headphones report no level at all.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately.
• Replacing the system HUDs is on by default, and it needs Accessibility. Two switches in Settings hand the keys back. Quitting Isleta hands them back too; if Isleta is force-quit, the system HUD stays out of the way until Isleta next starts. Brightness covers the built-in display only.
• Apple's own banner still appears when headphones connect. It is drawn by the menu bar rather than by the HUD helper Isleta can stand in for, so the island announces the connection alongside it rather than instead of it.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a floating island can sit over the middle of the space labels.
• Today and tomorrow show five entries and then a count. A busy pair of days says how many it could not fit rather than scrolling.
• The equalizer moves in a set pattern rather than to the song. Its colors come from the cover; its motion does not come from the audio.

The music card on the lock screen is made of glass now: your wallpaper reads through it and bends around its edges. Everything on it is bigger, too, for the times you are reading it from across the room.

Improved

• The lock screen player is glass rather than frosted. The wallpaper behind it comes through and refracts at the corners, the way the rest of the system does it. It becomes a solid dark panel if you have asked for reduced transparency.
• The lock screen player reads from further away. The elapsed and remaining times are larger, the progress line is thicker and runs most of the width of the card, and the Lossless or Dolby Atmos mark beside the artist is easier to pick out.
• The buttons on the lock screen player are spread across the card. Shuffle and repeat sit at the ends rather than huddled in the middle, so each one is easier to aim at without a cursor to guide you.
• The button under the pointer on the lock screen is obvious now. It takes a brighter wash and a defined edge, so it still shows against a pale wallpaper coming through the glass.
• The album's color stays on the equalizer and off the scrub bar. In the island's player the bars beside the cover still take the record's color; the position bar is plain white again, because a colored bar reads as though the color means something.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac without one gets a floating island on the main display.

Known limitations

• The lean at the end of a range needs Accessibility. Reaching the end of the volume or brightness no longer moves the island on its own, and the press after it is only visible to Isleta with that permission granted. The reading itself, and the bar filling and emptying, work either way.
• A muted Mac's bar cannot be dragged. It is drawn at nothing whatever the volume behind it is, so pressing it opens the island instead. Unmute first.
• You cannot see who is calling. macOS does not let apps outside Apple read that, or answer for you. Isleta shows that a call is happening and nothing more.
• Weather needs your location, or a city you type. Isleta asks for neither until you use it.
• A connected device's battery is read once, when it connects. It does not tick down as you wear them, and most non-Apple headphones report no level at all.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately.
• Replacing the system HUDs is on by default, and it needs Accessibility. Two switches in Settings hand the keys back. Quitting Isleta hands them back too; if Isleta is force-quit, the system HUD stays out of the way until Isleta next starts. Brightness covers the built-in display only.
• Apple's own banner still appears when headphones connect. It is drawn by the menu bar rather than by the HUD helper Isleta can stand in for, so the island announces the connection alongside it rather than instead of it.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a floating island can sit over the middle of the space labels.
• Today and tomorrow show five entries and then a count. A busy pair of days says how many it could not fit rather than scrolling.

The volume and brightness bars in the notch are controls now: press or drag one and the level goes there. Press anywhere else on them and they get out of the way.

New

• Drag the volume or brightness bar in the notch. Press anywhere along it to send the level there, or hold and drag to slide it. The bar is a few points tall and what you can aim at is much taller, so you do not have to be precise about it.
• Press the middle of the notch to put a level away and open the island. The reading goes, and the island opens on whatever you were last looking at — the player, if something is playing.

Improved

• A video in a browser shows the browser's icon instead of a music note. Anything playing without cover art — a Safari tab, a video on a site that publishes none — now says which app the sound is coming from, on every surface that draws a cover.
• The island no longer springs at the end of a range until you ask twice. Running the volume or brightness all the way down leaves the island where it is; the next press on the key is what makes it lean, and it keeps leaning for as long as you hold it.

Fixed

• Nothing appears on screen while the Mac is still unlocking. Plugging in the charger — or anything else the island announces — part way through the unlock used to draw the island over the top of it. It waits in the notch now, and arrives once the unlock has finished.
• A film's remaining time is no longer cut off. Anything over an hour showed -1:0… where the countdown belonged; the two times either side of the scrub bar now make room for the hours, and give the room back on tracks that do not need it.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac without one gets a floating island on the main display.

Known limitations

• The lean at the end of a range needs Accessibility. Reaching the end of the volume or brightness no longer moves the island on its own, and the press after it is only visible to Isleta with that permission granted. The reading itself, and the bar filling and emptying, work either way.
• A muted Mac's bar cannot be dragged. It is drawn at nothing whatever the volume behind it is, so pressing it opens the island instead. Unmute first.
• You cannot see who is calling. macOS does not let apps outside Apple read that, or answer for you. Isleta shows that a call is happening and nothing more.
• Weather needs your location, or a city you type. Isleta asks for neither until you use it.
• A connected device's battery is read once, when it connects. It does not tick down as you wear them, and most non-Apple headphones report no level at all.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately.
• Replacing the system HUDs is on by default, and it needs Accessibility. Two switches in Settings hand the keys back. Quitting Isleta hands them back too; if Isleta is force-quit, the system HUD stays out of the way until Isleta next starts. Brightness covers the built-in display only.
• Apple's own banner still appears when headphones connect. It is drawn by the menu bar rather than by the HUD helper Isleta can stand in for, so the island announces the connection alongside it rather than instead of it.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a floating island can sit over the middle of the space labels.
• Today and tomorrow show five entries and then a count. A busy pair of days says how many it could not fit rather than scrolling.

The music page is there when there is music. On a quiet Mac the island turns between two pages instead of three, and the sound the Mac makes when you unlock it is now a switch of its own.

New

• A switch for the unlock sound. Settings ▸ General ▸ Lock Screen has its own control for the short sound Isleta plays when you come back and the Mac unlocks. It is set to whatever your Mac was already doing, so nothing changes until you change it.

Improved

• The island stops showing a player with nothing in it. With nothing playing, a two-finger swipe goes from the day straight to the weather and the dots under the notch say two. Start something and the page is back between them; the small player beside your day is unchanged.
• A track ending never turns the page under you. If you are looking at the player when the music stops, it stays put and says "Not playing" until you swipe away or close the island.
• "Welcome back" no longer arrives with page dots under it. The greeting opens the island by itself, so the row of dots is left off. It is back the next time you open the island yourself.
• The island still remembers the player. If that is where you live, closing the island on a quiet Mac brings you back to the day — and the next time something is playing, back to the player.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac without one gets a floating island on the main display.

Known limitations

• You cannot see who is calling. macOS does not let apps outside Apple read that, or answer for you. Isleta shows that a call is happening and nothing more.
• Weather needs your location, or a city you type. Isleta asks for neither until you use it.
• A connected device's battery is read once, when it connects. It does not tick down as you wear them, and most non-Apple headphones report no level at all.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately.
• Replacing the system HUDs is on by default, and it needs Accessibility. Two switches in Settings hand the keys back. Quitting Isleta hands them back too; if Isleta is force-quit, the system HUD stays out of the way until Isleta next starts. Brightness covers the built-in display only.
• Apple's own banner still appears when headphones connect. It is drawn by the menu bar rather than by the HUD helper Isleta can stand in for, so the island announces the connection alongside it rather than instead of it.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a floating island can sit over the middle of the space labels.
• Today and tomorrow show five entries and then a count. A busy pair of days says how many it could not fit rather than scrolling.

The player names your audio again — "Lossless", "Hi-Res Lossless", "Dolby Atmos" — which 2.1.1 could lose for the rest of a session.

Fixed

• The audio format no longer disappears when you stop the music. In 2.1.1 the line under the artist went away the first time playback stopped, and resuming the same playlist did not bring it back — only a new track or restarting Isleta did. It stays with the track it describes now.
• And it comes back when you quit your player and open it again. Isleta now asks for the format when a track is playing without one, rather than waiting for a queue change — so it no longer takes a press of next and then previous to see "Lossless" again. This one was never right, in any version.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac without one gets a floating island on the main display.

Known limitations

• You cannot see who is calling. macOS does not let apps outside Apple read that, or answer for you. Isleta shows that a call is happening and nothing more.
• Weather needs your location, or a city you type. Isleta asks for neither until you use it.
• A connected device's battery is read once, when it connects. It does not tick down as you wear them, and most non-Apple headphones report no level at all.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately.
• Replacing the system HUDs is on by default, and it needs Accessibility. Two switches in Settings hand the keys back. Quitting Isleta hands them back too; if Isleta is force-quit, the system HUD stays out of the way until Isleta next starts. Brightness covers the built-in display only.
• Apple's own banner still appears when headphones connect. It is drawn by the menu bar rather than by the HUD helper Isleta can stand in for, so the island announces the connection alongside it rather than instead of it.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a floating island can sit over the middle of the space labels.
• Today and tomorrow show five entries and then a count. A busy pair of days says how many it could not fit rather than scrolling.

Volume and brightness now appear in the notch instead of in Apple's HUD, without your having to turn it on first. Isleta needs Accessibility for that, which it asks for on the first run.

New

• Isleta is open source, under the MIT License. The whole app is on GitHub — the same signed and notarized build you are updating to, with everything behind it now public.

Improved

• Isleta replaces the volume and brightness HUDs by default. Press a volume or brightness key and the level appears in the notch rather than in the middle of your screen. It needs Accessibility, which the first run asks for, and two switches in Settings put Apple's HUDs back.
• The lock screen's notch taps under your pointer. Move onto it and the padlock widens with the same small trackpad tap the island gives you when the Mac is unlocked. Nothing else on that screen taps.
• A day that is over says so. The day view now says "No more events today" once the day's events have finished, and keeps "No events today" for a day that never had any.

Fixed

• "Lossless" and "Dolby Atmos" no longer linger after the music stops. The badge belongs to the track it describes, so nothing is shown under "Not playing".

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac without one gets a floating island on the main display.

Known limitations

• You cannot see who is calling. macOS does not let apps outside Apple read that, or answer for you. Isleta shows that a call is happening and nothing more.
• Weather needs your location, or a city you type. Isleta asks for neither until you use it.
• A connected device's battery is read once, when it connects. It does not tick down as you wear them, and most non-Apple headphones report no level at all.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately.
• Replacing the system HUDs is on by default, and it needs Accessibility. Two switches in Settings hand the keys back. Quitting Isleta hands them back too; if Isleta is force-quit, the system HUD stays out of the way until Isleta next starts. Brightness covers the built-in display only.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a floating island can sit over the middle of the space labels.
• Today and tomorrow show five entries and then a count. A busy pair of days says how many it could not fit rather than scrolling.

The island now says what your power just did — "Charging" or "On Battery" beside the battery, the same way it names the key you pressed for volume and brightness.

New

• Plugging in and unplugging say so in words. The island widens beside the notch and shows "Charging" or "On Battery" next to the battery glyph, with the level beside it, then goes away on its own. A battery symbol with a small bolt in it and one without are hard to tell apart in a notch; the word is not.
• The same for the other power moments. "Charged", "Low Battery", and "Low Power On" or "Low Power Off" when macOS switches the mode.

Improved

• Power keeps the readable half of the island when music is playing. The word sits where the album cover would go and the track's own sliver moves to the other side, rather than the charger showing up as a bar with nothing to say what it measures.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac without one gets a floating island on the main display.

Known limitations

• You cannot see who is calling. macOS does not let apps outside Apple read that, or answer for you. Isleta shows that a call is happening and nothing more.
• Weather needs your location, or a city you type. Isleta asks for neither until you use it.
• A connected device's battery is read once, when it connects. It does not tick down as you wear them, and most non-Apple headphones report no level at all.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately.
• Replacing the system HUDs is off until you turn it on, and it needs Accessibility. Quitting Isleta hands your keys straight back; if Isleta is force-quit, the system HUD stays out of the way until Isleta next starts. Brightness covers the built-in display only.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a floating island can sit over the middle of the space labels.
• Today and tomorrow show five entries and then a count. A busy pair of days says how many it could not fit rather than scrolling.

Turning a page is smoother, the day view holds its size, and a day with nothing on it now says so instead of looking empty by accident.

Improved

• Turning a page is smoother. The three pages no longer redraw themselves on every frame of the swipe, so a day full of events or a playing track no longer makes the carousel stutter on its way past.

Fixed

• The day view's bottom edge stopped jumping up. Opening today and tomorrow from the date, then changing track — or anything else arriving on the island — pulled the bottom edge up and cut the last row off. It now stays where it opened, whatever else happens.
• A day with no events says so. "No events today" and "No events tomorrow", each in its own place, instead of a column that simply started at Tomorrow or stopped early. A free day and a day whose events failed to load looked identical before this.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac without one gets a floating island on the main display.

Known limitations

• You cannot see who is calling. macOS does not let apps outside Apple read that, or answer for you. Isleta shows that a call is happening and nothing more.
• Weather needs your location, or a city you type. Isleta asks for neither until you use it.
• A connected device's battery is read once, when it connects. It does not tick down as you wear them, and most non-Apple headphones report no level at all.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately.
• Replacing the system HUDs is off until you turn it on, and it needs Accessibility. Quitting Isleta hands your keys straight back; if Isleta is force-quit, the system HUD stays out of the way until Isleta next starts. Brightness covers the built-in display only.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a floating island can sit over the middle of the space labels.
• Today and tomorrow show five entries and then a count. A busy pair of days says how many it could not fit rather than scrolling.

The notch became something you can browse. Three pages — your day, your music, the weather — turned with a two-finger swipe, with everything that arrives on its own taking the stage in front of them. Now in German, French and Spanish.

New

• Three pages, and a swipe between them. Today, Music and Weather. Swipe two fingers across an open island to turn the page. They wrap, so there is no end to walk into.
• Your day, in the notch. What is next in your calendar, with a button that joins the meeting. Choose which calendars count in Settings.
• The weather where you are. Today's high and low, what it feels like, and the chance of rain for the next few days. Use your location, or type a city and pick it from the list.
• When it's raining, it rains in the island. The drops land on its bottom edge. Snow falls too, and both stop if you have asked macOS to reduce motion.
• A music page that shows the whole track. Long titles scroll and then settle, the album artwork lends the island its color, and the audio format shows as a small badge.
• Up Next. The queue your player is working through, the output device, favorite and playback speed. Double-click anything in the list to play it.
• Drop files on the island to convert them. Images, images to PDF, video, audio, Word, RTF, HTML, spreadsheets and presentations. Search the shelf, preview with Space, and look back through everything Isleta has made for you.
• Drop audio or video to transcribe it. The text lands beside the original. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is asked of you.
• Copy Link puts a shareable iCloud link on your clipboard. For files outside iCloud Drive it offers AirDrop instead.
• Isleta can answer your volume and brightness keys. Turn it on under Sources and the island replaces macOS's own HUD rather than sitting beside it. Volume and brightness are separate switches, both off until you turn them on.
• A card on the lock screen showing what is playing. It arrives when the Mac locks and leaves the moment you unlock it. Off until you turn it on.
• AirPods and other Bluetooth devices announce themselves when they connect, with the battery level if the device reports one.
• Battery, calls and timers. The charger going in and out, a low battery, Low Power Mode, a call in progress with how long it has been going, and timers you start in Clock.
• A first run that asks once. Eight short screens, five of them permissions — accessibility, music, calendar, weather and devices — each showing what the permission is for, and which button to press, before it asks. Skip any of them and the rest of Isleta still works.
• A list of apps the island stays out of entirely, for full-screen video or a presentation.
• Keyboard shortcuts for opening the island and showing your day, under General. Opening the island ships bound to ⌃⌥⌘I, because Isleta has no Dock icon and its menu bar item can be hidden; showing your day is unassigned until you assign it.
• Quick actions in the menu bar for whatever is on the island right now. The icon can be hidden; Quit and Open Setup Guide live in About as well.
• German, French and Spanish, following your Mac's language.

Improved

• Settings is a much smaller place. Four panes instead of seven, and roughly a third as many controls. What went were the settings asking you a question Isleta can answer for itself.
• The island is black in a real notch and glass where it floats, and no longer asks you to choose. It was never a matter of taste, so it is no longer a setting.
• The whole island moves as one. Its width, height and corners travel together, so opening it reads as a single motion rather than two.
• Reduce motion, reduce transparency and increase contrast are honored throughout.

Fixed

• Settings opens on the desktop you are looking at, rather than the one you last opened it on. Opening Settings now closes the island.
• Playing music costs a fraction of what it did. A playing track is now about as light as a quiet island.
• Closing Up Next gives the island its height back. The ✕ used to leave it tall.
• AirPods connecting no longer hangs Isleta at launch.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac without one gets a floating island on the main display.

Known limitations

• You cannot see who is calling. macOS does not let apps outside Apple read that, or answer for you. Isleta shows that a call is happening and nothing more.
• Weather needs your location, or a city you type. Isleta asks for neither until you use it.
• A connected device's battery is read once, when it connects. It does not tick down as you wear them, and most non-Apple headphones report no level at all.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately.
• Replacing the system HUDs is off until you turn it on, and it needs Accessibility. Quitting Isleta hands your keys straight back; if Isleta is force-quit, the system HUD stays out of the way until Isleta next starts. Brightness covers the built-in display only.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a floating island can sit over the middle of the space labels.

Two ways into Settings that no longer depend on the menu bar icon: the gear is on every open island now, and Export Logs… is inside Settings itself.

Improved

• The gear is on every open island. It used to appear only when there was something else to switch to, so an island with music playing and nothing waiting had no way into Settings at all. Open any island and rest the pointer on it — the row along the bottom has the gear in it, the same as when notifications are being held.
• Export Logs… is in Settings ▸ About. It is the one thing you are asked for in a bug report, and it used to live only behind the menu bar icon, which you can now hide. It writes the same single file, wherever you choose to save it — no notification text, track titles or file names in it.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac with none gets a synthesized island on the primary display.

Known limitations

• The battery is a snapshot, not a readout. It is read once, when the device connects, and the island goes a few seconds later. It does not tick down while you wear them — macOS gives no signal when the level changes, and Isleta will not poll for one.
• Third-party headphones may show no battery. Most non-Apple devices do not report a level to macOS at all. They still get their moment in the notch, with no ring beside them.
• A burst of notifications opens the island once for each. The list is where the ones you missed go; grouping them as they arrive is a later release's job.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately; macOS gives no signal for the others, and Isleta will not poll for them.
• The keyboard backlight HUD can appear when the room light changes. macOS adjusts the backlight for ambient light on its own, and does not say whether a change came from you or from the room. Isleta ignores the idle fade, which is the common case, but cannot tell the other two apart. Turn off “Adjust keyboard brightness in low light” if it bothers you.
• Apple's own HUDs and banners are not replaced. Isleta shows its own alongside them. For notifications the only way to hide Apple's banner is the one the system treats as you clearing the notification outright, which would empty your Notification Center as the price of a tidier screen. Not a trade Isleta will make for you.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a synthesized island can cover the centre of the space labels.
• Playing music costs more than it should. About 7.7% CPU against an internal 4% budget for an animating island, and a 250–290 MB footprint against a 60 MB one. It is not a leak: resident memory is flat and plateaus rather than climbing.
• Bluetooth headphones cost something at idle. With AirPods connected, Isleta sits at about 0.5% of a core with nothing on stage, against an internal 0.3% budget; with none connected it measures 0.02%. It is under investigation and it is not the AirPods feature — switching that source off does not move the figure, and neither the quiet island nor the AirPods moment adds a timer of its own.
• The hover target is the notch itself — 185×32 points, and easy to overshoot.
• Not on the Mac App Store. Signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and updated through Sparkle.

Clicking the island when nothing is playing now opens it, onto the two things it always has: the notifications you missed, and Settings. AirPods say hello when you put them in. And notifications wear the icon of the app that sent them, scroll, and open that app when you click one.

New

• Brightness HUDs, for the display and the keyboard. Change either and the island shows the level, the same way it already did for volume — the glyph in one sliver, the bar in the other. It arrives alongside Apple's own HUD rather than replacing it.

  Both were listed as impossible in the last four releases. Neither is: macOS publishes both levels and announces every change, just not through the APIs everyone reaches for first. Isleta reads them without asking for any permission, and stays completely idle between changes.

• An empty island opens instead of refusing. Click the notch on a quiet Mac and the island opens onto two buttons — Notifications and Settings — and nothing else. It is as short as an open island can be, and it closes the way any other does.

• Settings is one click from the notch. No shortcut to remember and no menu bar icon needed, which matters most if you have hidden the icon.

• AirPods show up in the notch when they connect. Take them out of the case and the island shows the AirPods themselves beside a ring of how much charge is left, for a few seconds, then goes. It works for AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, Beats, and any other Bluetooth headphones or speaker — the ones Apple makes get their own picture, everything else gets a generic pair. The ring turns amber below 20%, so a pair that will not last the afternoon says so. Isleta asks for Bluetooth access the first time it starts — that is what lets it hear a device arrive — and the whole thing can be switched off in Settings ▸ Sources.

• Notifications wear the icon of the app that sent them. Mail, Messages, Calendar, Slack — whatever posted it, in the island and in the list, in place of the bell. The bell is still what you get for an app Isleta cannot find on the disk.

• Clicking a notification opens the app it came from. It works the way clicking a banner does: the app comes forward, the row goes, and the island closes behind it. Your Notification Center copy is left alone — Isleta reads that list, it does not clear it for you.

Improved

• The notification list no longer disappears when you click something else. Clicking back into the window you were working in used to take the list away mid-read. It now stays until you dismiss it — with Clear All, with the ✕ beside it, or with Escape.
• Clear All empties the list and closes the island in one go, rather than leaving you looking at "Nothing recent".
• The Notifications button says how many are new, so a quiet island still tells you whether anything happened while you were away.
• The notification list scrolls. All twenty it keeps are reachable now, not just the five that fit — two fingers on the notch move the list, and a slim indicator down the edge says where in it you are. While the list is open that flick scrolls rather than closing the island; Clear All, the ✕ and Escape are still the ways out.
• A notification arriving while you are reading brings the list back to the top, so you watch it land instead of finding the rows rearranged under you.

Fixed

• The island no longer reopens at the wrong size after reading notifications. Closing the list and opening the island again could leave it as tall as the list had been, with far less in it.

• Two ear pieces are reported as the lower of the two. If one bud is at 50% and the other at 100%, the ring shows 50 — the one that runs out first is the one worth knowing about, and it is what Apple's own menu shows.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac with none gets a synthesized island on the primary display.

Known limitations

• The battery is a snapshot, not a readout. It is read once, when the device connects, and the island goes a few seconds later. It does not tick down while you wear them — macOS gives no signal when the level changes, and Isleta will not poll for one.
• Third-party headphones may show no battery. Most non-Apple devices do not report a level to macOS at all. They still get their moment in the notch, with no ring beside them.
• A burst of notifications opens the island once for each. The list is where the ones you missed go; grouping them as they arrive is a later release's job.
• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately; macOS gives no signal for the others, and Isleta will not poll for them.
• The keyboard backlight HUD can appear when the room light changes. macOS adjusts the backlight for ambient light on its own, and does not say whether a change came from you or from the room. Isleta ignores the idle fade, which is the common case, but cannot tell the other two apart. Turn off “Adjust keyboard brightness in low light” if it bothers you.
• Apple's own HUDs and banners are not replaced. Isleta shows its own alongside them. For notifications the only way to hide Apple's banner is the one the system treats as you clearing the notification outright, which would empty your Notification Center as the price of a tidier screen. Not a trade Isleta will make for you.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a synthesized island can cover the centre of the space labels.
• Playing music costs more than it should. About 7.7% CPU against an internal 4% budget for an animating island, and a 250–290 MB footprint against a 60 MB one. It is not a leak: resident memory is flat and plateaus rather than climbing.
• Bluetooth headphones cost something at idle. With AirPods connected, Isleta sits at about 0.5% of a core with nothing on stage, against an internal 0.3% budget; with none connected it measures 0.02%. It is under investigation and it is not the AirPods feature — switching that source off does not move the figure, and neither the quiet island nor the AirPods moment adds a timer of its own.
• The hover target is the notch itself — 185×32 points, and easy to overshoot.
• Not on the Mac App Store. Signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and updated through Sparkle.

The island holds two things at once, Clock timers count down beside the notch, and hovering an open island reveals a row for switching between everything Isleta is holding.

New

• Clock timers appear in the island. Start a timer in Clock and the countdown rides in the sliver beside the notch, drawn as Clock's own ring — orange while it runs, grey while it is paused. No permission is asked for and nothing is polled while no timer exists.
• Music and a timer at the same time. Music takes the left of the notch and a countdown the right, whichever of the two is holding the island open.
• Hover an open island for the switcher. A row of chips appears along the bottom listing everything Isleta is currently holding. Click one to bring it to the front — it stays there for half a minute, longer than a swipe holds it. Move the pointer away and the row goes.
• Recent notifications, on the ✉ chip. The last twenty that came through, including the ones that arrived while you were reading another and never made it to the island. Five fit; the rest are counted underneath. Held in memory only — never written to disk, never in an exported log, gone when Isleta quits.
• The menu bar icon can be hidden, in Settings › General. Your own shortcut still opens the island from any app, and the ⚙ chip in the switcher row is the way back into Settings.

Improved

• A finished timer does not take over the island. It shows itself beside the notch the way a volume change does, and Clock's own notification is left to be the thing you click.
• Long countdowns fit the sliver. An hour and four minutes reads 1h04 rather than being clipped to 4: above an ellipsis.
• The island grows and settles for the switcher row on one spring, in both directions, instead of snapping it in and out.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac with none gets a synthesized island on the primary display.

Known limitations

• A timer started by Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center can take a few seconds to appear. One started by hand in Clock is there immediately; macOS gives no signal for the others, and Isleta will not poll for them.
• Brightness has no HUD. macOS offers no public way to read display brightness on Apple Silicon.
• Apple's own HUDs are not replaced. Isleta shows its own alongside them.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a synthesized island can cover the centre of the space labels.
• A burst of notifications opens the island once for each. The ✉ chip is where the ones you missed go; grouping them as they arrive is a later release's job.
• Playing music costs more than it should. About 7.7% CPU against an internal 4% budget for an animating island, and a 250–290 MB footprint against a 60 MB one. It is not a leak: resident memory is flat and plateaus rather than climbing. Idle is unaffected — around 0.04% with nothing on stage, and a timer counting down does not measurably change that.
• The hover target is the notch itself — 185×32 points, and easy to overshoot.
• Not on the Mac App Store. Signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and updated through Sparkle.

Notifications no longer disappear when you click somewhere else.

Fixed

• A notification stays long enough to read. Clicking elsewhere still closes an island you opened, but no longer one that opened itself — the click that carried on whatever you were doing was taking the message away first. Escape, clicking the island, or swiping it up still close it.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac with none gets a synthesized island on the primary display.

Known limitations

• Brightness has no HUD. macOS offers no public way to read display brightness on Apple Silicon.
• Apple's own HUDs are not replaced. Isleta shows its own alongside them.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a synthesized island can cover the centre of the space labels.
• A burst of notifications opens the island once for each. Grouping them is a later release's job.
• The hover target is the notch itself — 185×32 points, and easy to overshoot.
• Playing music costs more than it should. About 7.7% CPU against an internal 4% budget for an animating island, and a 250–290 MB memory footprint against a 60 MB one, both reproduced across four runs. It is not a leak: resident memory is flat and the footprint plateaus rather than climbing. Idle is unaffected — around 0.04% with nothing on stage, well inside its own 0.3% budget. Earlier releases quoted 0.4% here; that figure is superseded, and how it was arrived at could not be established.
• Not on the Mac App Store. Signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and updated through Sparkle.

A fix for 1.1.0: the General page in Settings could not be clicked.

Improved

• The Notifications row says where you stand in three words — "Granted." or "Not granted yet." — instead of a paragraph restating the description directly above it.

Fixed

• General could not be clicked in Settings. 1.1.0 put a blur behind the sidebar's icon and version number so the page names pass behind them when the list scrolls. It reached 28 points too far down, over the first row, where it quietly swallowed clicks — so anyone who navigated to another page could not get back to General.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac with none gets a synthesized island on the primary display.

Known limitations

• Brightness has no HUD. macOS offers no public way to read display brightness on Apple Silicon.
• Apple's own HUDs are not replaced. Isleta shows its own alongside them.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a synthesized island can cover the centre of the space labels.
• A burst of notifications opens the island once for each. Grouping them is a later release's job.
• The hover target is the notch itself — 185×32 points, and easy to overshoot.
• Playing music costs about 0.4% CPU, against an internal 0.3% budget. Everything else is inside budget.
• Not on the Mac App Store. Signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and updated through Sparkle.

Isleta introduces itself on first launch, notifications open the island and show what they say, and the island stays at the notch through every kind of space switch.

New

• A setup guide the first time you open Isleta. Four screens: what the notch is about to start doing, the one permission Isleta ever asks for, launch at login, and where to find the island. Leave it at any point — it does not come back. In the status menu as Open Setup Guide.
• Notifications open the island and show the whole message — who it is from and what it says, not the first two lines. It closes itself a few seconds later, unless you opened the island yourself, in which case it stays yours.
• Swipe up with two fingers to close an open island. Up is up, whichever way you have "natural scrolling" set. Swiping sideways still stows the island's content.
• Export Logs… in the status menu writes a single file, wherever you choose, with everything needed to look into a problem. It offers to show you the file afterwards.
• Isleta keeps a log at ~/Library/Logs/Isleta — events only, never track titles or notification text, so the export is safe to send to a stranger. It never grows past a few megabytes. For more detail: defaults write com.tryisleta.isleta VerboseLogging -bool YES.

Improved

• The island opens to the size of what it is holding. A wake greeting opens short, a notification opens as far as its message needs, and the player is unchanged.
• A notification no longer clips the app's name into a 40-point sliver where "Messages" did not fit. VoiceOver still reads it out.
• Settings is five pages, not seven. Shortcut is now a card in General. System held one switch that could never be turned on and is gone — what it explained is under Sources, beside the thing it is about.
• Sources reads as one list, instead of four headings each repeated by the switch beneath it.
• Island opacity appears only if you have a display without a notch, which is the only place it has ever done anything.
• Copy Diagnostics has left the status menu. Export Logs… carries the same report and the history behind it.

Fixed

• The island stays at the notch when you switch spaces — desktops, fullscreen apps, trackpad swipes and ⌃← / ⌃→ alike. No wait, no bounce, no blip, and Input Monitoring is no longer involved.
• Now Playing said the same sentence twice in Settings — once as its description, once as its status.
• The settings sidebar drew page names through the Isleta icon and the version number when you scrolled it.

Requirements

macOS 26 or later, on Apple Silicon. Displays with a real notch get the island; a Mac with none gets a synthesized island on the primary display.

Known limitations

• Brightness has no HUD. macOS offers no public way to read display brightness on Apple Silicon.
• Apple's own HUDs are not replaced. Isleta shows its own alongside them; the switch that suggested otherwise is gone.
• The island sits above Mission Control. In a real notch it covers nothing; a synthesized island can cover the centre of the space labels.
• A burst of notifications opens the island once for each. Grouping them is a later release's job.
• The hover target is the notch itself — 185×32 points, and easy to overshoot.
• Playing music costs about 0.4% CPU, against an internal 0.3% budget. Everything else is inside budget.
• Not on the Mac App Store. Signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and updated through Sparkle.

A maintenance release. The island now gets out of the way when you move between desktops and fullscreen apps, and the Welcome Back moment opens by itself.

Fixed

Launch at login works. In 1.0.0 the switch was greyed out with "this copy of Isleta is not code signed" under it, on a copy that was signed and notarized. macOS reports a login item it has never seen before and one it cannot register in ways that are easy to confuse, and Isleta believed the wrong one — so the switch was dead for anyone who had not already turned it on, which is everyone. It is live now, and if the system does refuse, it says why instead of deciding in advance.

The island no longer travels with a switching workspace. Moving between spaces left it painted into the slide — pinned over two desktops sailing past, or welded to the arriving fullscreen app and drifting away from the notch, before snapping back to where it had been all along. It now goes off screen the instant a switch begins and arrives back at the notch with its usual bounce.

The cause is that a space transition photographs the screen rather than compositing it live, so the island had to be gone before the picture was taken — a few milliseconds after the switch starts, and well before anything can be redrawn. Every transition behaves differently: a desktop slide announces itself one way, entering a fullscreen app another, and leaving one a third, with nothing at all marking the end. Isleta now hides on anything that might be a switch and comes back once the system stops reporting, which is the only account of "finished" that holds for all of them.

Settings opens in front, and in the middle. The window used to arrive behind whatever app you were using — drawn correctly, but without focus, so the switches worked while the window looked dead and Escape went somewhere else. On a Mac that had never opened it, it also came up flush against the left edge and low instead of centred. Both are fixed, and a window you have moved yourself still opens where you left it.

Quitting no longer strands a helper process. Isleta reads Now Playing through a small perl helper, and an ordinary Quit was ending the app while the helper was still being told to stop — one orphan per launch, quietly accumulating until a restart. Teardown now waits for it, and any strays left behind by an earlier crash are cleared at the next launch.

The status menu no longer shows a ⌘, next to "Open Isleta Settings". Isleta has no menu bar to dispatch it from, so the shortcut it advertised opened the settings of whichever app was frontmost. Clicking the item does what it always did.

Improved

Welcome Back opens on its own. The greeting used to wait behind a click. It now presents itself when you come back to the Mac, with a second line under the greeting drawn from a set written for the hour — morning, afternoon, evening and night each have their own, and the night ones know what time it is.

The app icon's ripples are lighter, which keeps them from over-brightening in dark mode.

Requirements

Unchanged from 1.0.0: macOS 26 or later, Apple Silicon, and a display with a real notch — or a synthesized island on the primary display for a Mac that has none.

Notes and limitations

Everything listed under 1.0.0 still applies. One addition worth knowing:

• The island takes a moment to return after a space switch — about a third of a second once the system has confirmed the switch finished. macOS provides no signal for the end of a space transition, so Isleta waits for the reports to stop rather than guessing; coming back sooner means reappearing in the middle of the animation.

The first release. Isleta turns the MacBook notch into an interactive surface — the Dynamic Island, done properly for the Mac.

At rest it is invisible: pure black filling exactly the cutout, its bottom corners following the cutout's own. Move the pointer onto the notch and it swells a few points on all three free edges while the trackpad taps once. Click and it opens.

What's in it

Now Playing. Album artwork, a live equaliser, play/pause, skip, shuffle and repeat, and a scrubber you can drag to seek. Reads whatever is playing through the system's own media service, with an AppleScript fallback for Music and Spotify that listens for track changes rather than polling for them.

Volume and mute. The system HUD's information, in the notch, without a grey square in the middle of your screen.

Notifications. Incoming banners appear in the island. Requires Accessibility permission; Isleta is fully usable without it.

Welcome Back. A moment on wake and unlock, timed to arrive after the login shield has finished dissolving rather than during it.

The shelf. Drag files onto the island and it holds them, then drag them back out wherever you need them.

Swipe and stow. Swipe across the island to move between queued activities, or flick it left or right to stow it out of the way. Click to bring it back.

Settings. Hover delay, peek amount, activity dwell and synthesized-island opacity are continuous, each with something live reading it. Per-source switches, a global toggle shortcut that prints itself in your keyboard layout rather than assuming QWERTY, launch at login, and automatic update checks.

Requirements

• macOS 26 or later, Apple Silicon.
• Isleta presents only on displays with a real notch. An external monitor has no cutout for the island to be continuous with, so it gets none. A Mac with no notched display at all — mini, Studio, iMac — gets a synthesized island on the primary display instead.

Notes and limitations

• Brightness has no HUD. There is no public route to observe brightness on Apple Silicon, so volume and mute ship and brightness does not.
• Apple's own HUDs are not suppressed. The switch exists, off by default and reversible, but Isleta ships alongside the system HUD rather than in place of it.
• The hover target is the notch, which is 185×32pt and easy to overshoot — especially with another display arranged directly above the laptop, where the pointer travels straight through. Discovery is an open design question, not a solved one.
• Playing music costs about 0.4% CPU against an internal 0.3% idle budget. Everything else — cold launch, memory, idle with nothing on stage — is inside budget.
• Not on the Mac App Store: Accessibility and the bundled media helper are incompatible with the sandbox. Isleta is signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and updates itself through Sparkle.

Credits

Uses Sparkle and mediaremote-adapter, both BSD-3-Clause. Full acknowledgements are in the app's About pane.