Can you hide the notch on a MacBook? Ways to make it disappear

No setting removes the notch, because it isn't software. It is a cutout in the screen that holds the camera, and there are no pixels there to change. What you can do is make everything around it black, so the notch blends into a dark strip and stops looking like a notch at all.

The main ways are a wallpaper with a black band across the top, full screen apps (which already black out the strip beside the camera), and a Finder setting for the odd app that puts things behind the notch. And then there is the method most owners end up using without trying: time.

Why it can't be switched off

The notch is part of the hardware. On notched MacBooks, Apple made the screen reach up beside the camera and put the menu bar in the extra strip on either side. Your windows start below that strip, so the notch never covers your work. It only ever sits in the menu bar.

That is why hiding it is really about the menu bar. If the strip on either side of the camera is black, the notch is black on black, and your eye reads the whole thing as a thick border along the top of the screen. If you aren't sure whether your Mac has one at all, which Macs have a notch lists every model.

A wallpaper with a black band across the top

The menu bar is see-through to a degree and takes on the color of the wallpaper behind it. A wallpaper that is black along its top edge gives you a dark menu bar, and the notch disappears into it.

The quickest version

Open System Settings > Wallpaper and choose black from the Colors section. Turn on Dark appearance in System Settings > Appearance as well, so the menu bar text is light. The notch is now very hard to spot. The trade-off is a plain black desktop, which some people like and some find gloomy.

Keep your own picture, with a band added

If you want to keep a photo, add a black stripe to the top of it. You can do this in Preview:

1. Open a copy of the picture in Preview (File > Duplicate, then save the copy).
2. Choose Tools > Annotate > Rectangle, and draw a rectangle across the top.
3. With the rectangle selected, set both its fill color and its border color to black in the Markup toolbar.
4. Drag its edges so it runs off both sides and off the top, and reaches a little below where the menu bar will sit.
5. Save, then Control-click the file in Finder and choose Set Desktop Picture (it may be under Quick Actions or Services), or add it in System Settings > Wallpaper.

Two things make this work better. Use a picture with roughly the same shape as your screen, so macOS doesn't crop your band away when it fills the screen. And err on the side of a deeper band: a thin black strip under the menu bar looks deliberate, but a sliver of color showing beside the camera gives the game away.

Full screen apps already hide it

When an app goes full screen on a notched MacBook, it uses the screen below the camera and leaves the strip at the top black. The notch disappears into that band. Click the green button at the top left of a window, or press Control-Command-F in most apps, and watch the notch vanish.

Video works the same way. A film played full screen fills the area below the camera and leaves black above, so the notch never cuts into the picture. The menu bar slides down over the band when you push the pointer up to the top edge, and goes away again when you move it back down. There is more on this, including how to keep the menu bar visible in full screen, in our guide to full screen apps on a notched MacBook.

For apps that put things behind it

Most apps know about the notch and keep clear of it. A few older apps and games don't, and their menus or controls can end up behind the camera. For those, macOS has a per-app fix.

1. Quit the app.
2. In Finder, open the Applications folder and select the app.
3. Choose File > Get Info, or press Command-I.
4. Turn on Scale to fit below built-in camera.
5. Open the app again.

The app now runs in the area below the camera, with a black band above it, like a full screen app. While it is open, other apps on the same screen may shift below the camera too, until you quit it. Turn the setting off the same way if you change your mind. If you don't see the option for an app, it most likely handles the notch already.

This isn't a way to hide the notch for every app, and it isn't meant to be. It is a fix for the handful that misbehave.

Why most people stop noticing it

Plenty of people who expected the notch to bother them say they stopped seeing it within a week or two. There are good reasons for that.

• It never moves. Your brain is quick to tune out things that are always in the same place and never change, the way you stop seeing the frame of your glasses.
• It sits outside your work. Your windows stop below the menu bar, so the notch never covers a document, a face on a call or a line of code. You look at it only when you look at the menu bar.
• It is black. With Dark appearance or a dark wallpaper, it is a black shape on a black strip. Even with a light menu bar, it reads as part of the frame.

If it still bothers you after a couple of weeks, try the black band for a few days. It takes a minute to undo, and for many people it settles the matter.

Or give the notch a reason to be there

Hiding the notch isn't the only option. You can also give it a job, so that it is the place something useful comes from. Ways to make the MacBook notch useful covers the kinds of apps that do that.

Notchpals is one of them. Its characters live in the notch and come out every so often to suggest a glass of water or a break for your eyes, then slip back, and the notch is a plain black cutout again. One member of your crew is the host, who says good morning when you first sit down at the Mac in the morning, and welcome back when you return after 15 minutes or more away. If your host is Boo, the shy ghost who looks after Sleep, it greets you like this:

BooI waited right here the whole time... ghosts are good at waiting.

The crew also plays along with the tricks above. Go full screen to make the notch vanish and the characters hold back until you come out of it again, and they keep away entirely while the camera inside the notch, or the microphone, is in use. With the lid closed, or on a Mac with no notch, Notchpals draws a black island where a notch would be, at the top of the main display, and a dark band across the top of your wallpaper hides that one just as well.