Cupola vs OmniNotch
Two products side by side.
| Cupola | OmniNotch | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Apple Calendar, Reminders and Notes in your Mac's notch | Twenty tools in the MacBook notch, one-time license |
| Pricing | Free trial | Paid |
| Categories | Productivity | Utilities, Productivity |
| Tags | macOS, Privacy-first, Local-first, Scheduling, Notes | macOS, Privacy-first, AI, Local-first |
| Score | 50%8 votes | 46%13 votes |
| Website | trycupola.com | omninotch.app |
| Founder | Not listed | Not listed |
| Listed | Oct 3, 2026 | Oct 3, 2026 |
Which should you pick?
- If price decides it, start with Cupola: it is listed as paid with a free trial, while OmniNotch is paid.
- Too close to call: 50% for Cupola and 46% for OmniNotch.
- Only Cupola is tagged Scheduling and Notes.
- Only OmniNotch is tagged AI.
- Both list themselves as alternatives to NotchNook, so they are aimed at the same job.
Positioning is from each listing, not an endorsement.
About Cupola
Cupola is a native Mac app that puts Apple Calendar, Reminders and Notes together in one place. Hover over the MacBook notch to open a panel with four tabs: your week's calendar, reminders you can tick off, your real Apple Notes with checklists, and a focus timer you set by dragging a dial. Click "View all" to open the full app, which has day, week, month and agenda views, reminder lists and tags, and a home screen showing today's events, reminders and recent notes. On Macs or displays without a notch, a small pill at the top of the screen opens the same panel.
You can type entries in plain language, like "dentist next tuesday 4pm", and Cupola works out the date and time and adds the item to Calendar or Reminders. It reads from and writes to Apple's own apps, so there's nothing to import and no account to create. Changes made in either place show up in the other, and on your iPhone through iCloud. Your calendars, notes and reminders are never uploaded. The app only goes online to check for updates, verify your license and send crash reports, which you can turn off.
Cupola isn't on the Mac App Store. You install it with a one-line Terminal command. It needs Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later. There's a 7-day free trial with no card required, then a $20 one-time lifetime license with a 14-day refund window.
About OmniNotch
OmniNotch is a macOS app that turns the MacBook camera notch into a panel of twenty tools. It opens when you hover over the notch or when you click it. It includes now-playing controls, a searchable clipboard history, a file shelf with AirDrop sending, calendar and reminders, to-dos, weather, stocks, a unit converter, system stats, Pomodoro timers, a teleprompter that scrolls under the camera, and a camera mirror. On Macs without a notch, it draws its own floating notch at the top of the screen.
Ask Omni is a chat tool for rewriting, summarizing and asking questions, and it runs on Apple's on-device Foundation Models. Another panel shows your session and weekly usage limits for Claude, Codex, Cursor, Copilot and Grok by reading the tools already on your Mac. A Sales panel adds up today's revenue from Stripe, Shopify, Lemon Squeezy, Gumroad, Paddle and others, using read-only keys stored in the Keychain.
OmniNotch is sold as a lifetime license. The page says there is no subscription, no account and no telemetry. One license covers up to 3 Macs, and refunds are available for 7 days. It runs on macOS Sonoma or later, on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs. The app is built on the open-source NotchDrop project.