Crest vs NotchNook: which notch app should you get?

NotchNook is on sale again from a new site, getnotchnook.com: $25 once or $3 a month, with a 48-hour trial and no card (checked 9 October 2026). Its relaunch offer, $15 once or $2 a month for as long as you stay subscribed, ends on 17 October 2026 (checked 13 October 2026); until then it costs less than Crest. Crest is $24.99 once with Take and Minutes, or $2.99 a month, and has a free tier. Here's an honest side-by-side.

Last updated: 9 October 2026

Crest 6, 30 September 2026: Crest was redesigned from the ground up: one shape that grows out of the notch, music on the closed notch, pages of widgets you stretch, and one card for every coding agent’s question. This page is updated for it. What’s new in Crest 6.

Full disclosure: this page is published by the makers of Crest. We've kept the NotchNook side fair and specific, including the things it genuinely does better, so this is useful whichever app you end up with.

Update, 9 October 2026: NotchNook is on sale again from a new site, getnotchnook.com, at version 1.6.5. Its old page, lo.cafe/notchnook, still answers “not found”, Setapp’s NotchNook address still opens its general catalog, and Homebrew’s NotchNook cask has been disabled since 19 September 2026. lo.cafe’s home page shows a statement from NotchNook’s co-founders about a dispute over control of the company behind the app. We are not taking sides. Already own NotchNook? The new site’s licence help says keys bought before 24 September 2026 do not activate automatically: it offers a manual review for lifetime licences, or a new licence, and an old monthly subscription does not carry over.

Coming from NotchNook

Nothing imports from NotchNook, so here is where each thing you used lives in Crest, and whether it is in the free tier or needs Crest Pro.

Download Crest freeFree tier, no account · 7-day Pro trial, no card · macOS 14 or later

In the official Homebrew caskbrew install --cask crestCopy

Side by side

The comparison table is at the top of this page.

Where NotchNook is better

• Track record. NotchNook has been around longer, shipped frequent updates, and Setapp users rated it about 89% positive across 1,400+ reviews. Crest is the newest app in the category and can't claim that history yet.
• Customization. Colors, layouts, haptic feedback, fine-grained options everywhere. If you love tweaking every pixel, NotchNook is the deepest.
• AirDrop drop zone. Its tray includes a dedicated AirDrop target that reviewers consistently praise.

Where Crest is better

• A real free tier. Now Playing (with lyrics and the queue), the file Shelf, the Clipboard, and window snapping are free, and the free tier never expires. NotchNook gives you a 48-hour trial, then asks for money. With Crest you only pay if the free tier wins you over.
• Three apps for one price. Crest’s $24.99 once, or $2.99 a month, or $14.99 a year, also covers Take, our screen recorder, and Minutes, our meeting notes app. NotchNook’s $25 once or $3 a month buys NotchNook, and it lists no yearly plan.
• Pages of widgets, arranged your way. Crest 6 lays the notch out as a row of pages, Now, Home, Work and Code, each holding widgets you arrange yourself. Swipe with two fingers or use the arrow keys to move between them, and stretch a widget to resize it.
• Battery and sleep, by design. The most common complaints about notch apps in general (and NotchNook in user reviews) are battery drain and freezing after sleep/wake. Crest was built against exactly those: animations pause on battery and Low Power Mode, monitors suspend while your Mac sleeps and re-pin on wake.
• Developer widgets nobody else has. Crest can show your GitHub pull requests and CI status in the notch, and watch live Claude Code, Codex and Copilot CLI sessions, pinging the notch when an AI coding agent needs your permission and jumping you back to the exact terminal. If you write code, this alone may decide it.
• Claude in the notch. Ask it, or just talk to it, and it answers on your own Claude subscription with no API key. Say “remind me to call the bank at 6 and add finish the deck to my to-dos” and it lays out a plan of real reminders, to-dos and calendar events: tick what you want and press Do it. Nothing runs before that. NotchNook has nothing like it.
• Volume and brightness on the notch, on macOS 26. Crest catches the media keys and shows the level on the notch, and it keeps working on macOS 26 Tahoe where the older system-overlay approach stopped working. Scroll on the notch to change the volume.
• On-device privacy. Crest needs no account for its free tier, sends no tracking (just an anonymous install count you can turn off) and has no servers reading your activity; every widget runs entirely on your Mac.

What we won't claim: that Crest is more polished than NotchNook. NotchNook has years of refinement behind it. What we do claim are the specific engineering choices above, and a price and free tier that let you judge Crest without spending anything.

The pricing math

Crest Pro is $24.99 once, with Take and Minutes and updates through Crest 7, on up to 2 Macs, or $2.99 a month, or $14.99 a year, with every update. NotchNook is a $25 lifetime licence or $3 a month, each on two Macs (checked 9 October 2026). On either app, paying monthly passes the one-time price after about eight months, so if you plan to keep it longer, buy it once.

Try before you decide

This is the easiest comparison to settle yourself, because trying Crest costs nothing: its free tier never expires, and Pro has its own 7-day trial. NotchNook has a 48-hour trial with every feature and no card. Run one, then the other (not both at once, they both own the notch), and keep the one that fits how you work. Download Crest free to start.Free tier, no account · 7-day Pro trial, no card · macOS 14 or later

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