A little world in your notch.
Notchfolk turns the top edge of your GNOME desktop into a small notch that shows your music, synced lyrics, tasks, calendar and AI — then quietly gets out of the way.
- we fold the summer light
- into paper birds tonight
- and send them through the sky
- to find you by the sea
- every wing a little song
- that carries us along
Everything you glance at, in one place.
Hover the notch to open it. Move away and it closes. Nothing to arrange, nothing to pin.
Music
See what's playing, skip, pause and seek — from Spotify, your browser, or any MPRIS player — without switching windows.
Synced lyrics
The island widens and takes the cover's colour, each line lighting up as it's sung. Click a line to jump there. Lyrics from LRCLIB.
Tasks & reminders
Jot a task, give it a time, and the notch taps you when it's due. Missed ones stay in the last 7 days, so nothing is lost.
Calendar
Today's events at a glance, with a gentle nudge before each one starts.
AI assistant
Ask in plain words and get an answer in the island. Claude, Codex, Hermes, OpenAI, and more — the provider you chose in Settings.
Voice control
Press Super+I and talk. Local Whisper keeps it offline, or point it at your own OpenAI-compatible router — the key stays in your desktop's secret store.
MCP server
56 tools your AI can use — tasks, calendar, reminders, files, and more — over a local server on your computer.
Focus timer
A calm Pomodoro with the whole round at a glance, a breathing Live Activity in the notch and gentle reminders.
Water & calories
Set your bottle size and daily goal, log meals, and see today's progress in the notch.
File shelf
Drag files onto the notch to keep them close, then drag them out into a chat, an email or another folder.
Prayer times
An optional page with today's prayers on a sun arc, gentle reminders, and music that can pause by itself. Calculated on your PC.
Clipboard history
What you copy waits beside your Shelf. Click to copy it again, or drag it straight into a chat.
A small companion that knows when to rest.
When nothing is happening, the clock fades and a pair of eyes appears. They doze off after a while, and wave hello when you come back.
Light on your PC
Notchfolk draws only while something moves. When it's idle it uses no CPU at all, even with music in the background.
Your data stays here
Tasks, water logs and shelf items are stored on your computer. There are no accounts and no tracking.
Made for GNOME
Built natively for GNOME 46–51, sharp on every display scale, and it steps aside for full-screen apps.
So light, you'll forget it's there.
Notchfolk is built natively for GNOME, not on a hidden web browser. It sits quietly until something happens, then gets out of the way again.
notchfolkd- Native code. Written in Rust and drawn by your graphics card, with no web engine running in the background.
- Draws only when something moves. When the notch is still, Notchfolk stops drawing completely.
- Waits instead of checking. The system tells Notchfolk when a song changes, so it never polls.
- Files stay where they are. The shelf remembers where your files live instead of copying them into memory.
Make it yours.
Open Settings → Appearance. A few switches decide how Notchfolk behaves on your screen.
Settings → Appearance → Island
Black or Glass island
Notchfolk's own black island, or clear dark glass over what is behind it, blurred, with a lit rim. The slider sets how dark the glass is.
Notch or pill shape
Joined to the top of the screen, or a round pill floating just below it — the same island either way.
Standard or Large
The open island 600 or 720 px wide, its pages taller at Large, each laying itself out for the room.
Your clock, your format
24-hour or 12-hour, following your GNOME clock. The island's clock always matches.
Notch size
Adjust it yourself. It's automatically larger on wide monitors.
Follows GNOME
Accent colour and text size come from your GNOME settings — change them there and the island restyles itself.
New in Notchfolk 1.2.8.
A pill shape, a shortcut for every page, a larger island — and an installer that asks again.
What's new
- Pill shapeSettings → Shape: the island as a round pill floating just below the top bar, or the notch joined to the top as before — the same island either way, black or glass, on every display.
- A shortcut for every pageSettings → Shortcuts: every page can be opened from anywhere with a shortcut of its own. Super+V opens the page Settings says — the clipboard history by default, as before.
- Size: LargeThe open island 720 px wide instead of 600, every page taller, each laying itself out for the room: a larger cover, timer ring and month.
- The island on all displaysA mirror of the island on every monitor, not only the main one.
Fixes
- The installer asks againWhen GitHub times out or is busy for a moment, the one-line install tries again instead of failing.
- opencode 2: session deleteRuns with --standalone, so it no longer starts a background service on a port the user's own may hold.
Good to know
Bluetooth devices warn as their battery runs low (20, 10, 5%), beside the phone's.
Version 1.2.8 is the latest release. Run the install command again to update; your settings stay as you set them.
Get Notchfolk for GNOME
GNOME 46–51 on Linux, x86_64.
Install with one command
Paste this in a terminal. It installs the extension and the daemon to your home folder, then log out and back in.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/galyarderlabs/notchfolk/main/get.sh | bashPrefer a package? notchfolk-bin is prepared in packaging/aur, but AUR registration is paused, so it isn't published yet — yay won't find it. The command above is the way to install for now.
Why it's safe
- Installs to your home folder. No admin rights, nothing system-wide.
- Your settings stay as you set them. Run the same command again to update.
- Remove it anytime with
notchfolk-uninstall. - Your data stays on your computer. No accounts, no tracking. Synced lyrics come from LRCLIB.
- Only install Notchfolk from this page or the official GitHub releases.
Keep Notchfolk going.
If Notchfolk makes your day a little better, a star on GitHub helps more people find it — and tells me it's worth building.
Notchfolk is free and open source (GPL-3.0). Issues and stars are how it grows.
Tell me what you think.
Found a bug, or have an idea for a feature? I read every message.
Issues are the fastest way to reach me — bug reports and feature ideas welcome.
An honest note.
From Galih, the person behind Notchfolk
Notchfolk is a personal project, built by one person in their spare time. It started as a fork of Isle, and it is still shaped by what I use every day. Thank you for trying it.
This is a living project. You may run into bugs, and some setups may behave a little differently from mine. If something breaks, please tell me through GitHub Issues and I'll keep improving it.
Only install Notchfolk from this page or the official GitHub releases. If a file ever comes from anywhere else, don't run it. That file isn't from me.
Notchfolk is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0, and provided “as is”, without warranties of any kind. Your data stays on your computer; the only connections are to LRCLIB for synced lyrics and to the AI providers you choose.
Questions
How do I install Notchfolk?
Paste the install command above in a terminal. It installs the extension and the daemon to your home folder, then log out and back in (or restart GNOME Shell on X11). Run the same command again to update; your settings stay as you set them.
Which GNOME versions work?
GNOME 46 to 51, on Linux (x86_64), Wayland or X11. It's a GNOME Shell extension, so it needs GNOME Shell.
How does voice control work?
Press Super+I and speak. Whisper runs on your device — set it up with notchfolk-setup-voice — and turns your words into text. If it doesn't catch you, run notchfolkd --doctor to check the microphone.
Where is my data stored?
On your computer: tasks, reminders, and files in ~/.local/share/notchfolk, settings in ~/.config/notchfolk. There are no accounts and no tracking.
Is there an AUR package?
Not yet. notchfolk-bin is prepared, but AUR registration is paused, so it isn't published. The install command above is the way to install for now.
Privacy
Notchfolk doesn't collect personal data and has no analytics. Your tasks, reminders, files, clipboard history, and settings are saved only on your computer, in ~/.local/share/notchfolk and ~/.config/notchfolk.
Prayer times are calculated on your computer from the city you choose. Voice is transcribed by local Whisper on your device, or by the speech router you configure yourself — nothing is sent anywhere you have not set up.
When you use synced lyrics, Notchfolk sends the song title, artist, and length to LRCLIB (lrclib.net) to find matching lyrics.
When you use an AI provider, your request goes to that provider, as you chose in Settings. The MCP server runs on your computer (localhost); if you expose it with a tunnel, only the people and tools you give the address to can reach it.