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The counterexample: a general Mac notch app. Open source drove the price to zero, and Apple took back Dynamic Island.
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Don't build a general notch app.Free open source already pushed the floor to zero, and Apple took back the "Dynamic Island" idea. If you already have real features (email, captions, teleprompter), hook the notch and live activities in as an entry point, but don't treat the notch as the product.Long shot · grade and headline drawn from the full article · next review 12-01
| Background | In October, 108 notch / Dynamic Island launches appeared on Product Hunt. 10-28 Apple built Dynamic Island into the new MacBook Pro. |
|---|---|
| Upside | Closed: generic notch apps sold for $5, open source and free. What's left is turning real features into live activities on Mac |
| Demand | Users buy email, subtitles, and teleprompting, not 'the notch.' Generic notch apps earn a few tens of dollars a day after one post. |
| Competition | boring.notch has 11k GitHub stars and is free; Atoll and Isleta compete; paid prices $3–5. October PH launches: 108; TrustMRR products with 24 after September |
| Revenue | Of 38 notch products on TrustMRR, 30 days in, they totaled $6,303, with a median of $11,6 for listed-for-sale ones. Meanwhile the email client bytemail earned $23,523 |
| Growth | The author posts on X / Threads with a real deadline. PH only amplifies what's already growing. The ad library shows no one who grew through paid acquisition. |
| Window | Generic notch apps are dying; for Live Activities, watch the media roundup in the 2–3 weeks after 11-06 new devices ship |
| Who it's for | If you already have a Mac tool you open every day, spend a week or two adding Live Activities. Don't build 'bring Dynamic Island to Mac' from scratch. |
Latest
- 11-08Halo, a new notch-to-Dynamic-Island app, hit $1,002 in 35 days and $681 in 30 days. New notch apps top out around $1K a month. Over the same period OmniNotch fell from $2,744 to $391 in 30 days, so the launch spike faded completely. Paid notch apps are still getting cheaper, and their ceilings are still dropping.
- 11-06OmniNotch's daily revenue fell from $2,744 to $455 (−84.9%) in 30 days; the launch spike for general notch apps faded faster than expected. Over the same period Cooldock hit $10,585 on paid acquisition, so the money is in ads, not the notch itself.
- 11-03OmniNotch's daily revenue fell from $2,743 to $1,852 over 30 days. Cooldock reached $10,288 in 30 days on paid acquisition (+143%), but it's a Dock app, not a notch app. Mac dock and notch categories are spilling into Windows; general notch apps themselves haven't recovered.