Modern MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops feature a physical “notch” at the top of the screen—a black rectangular cutout that houses the webcam. While this allows for thinner bezels, it severely disrupts the menu bar. If you use a specialized app with dozens of menu options, those text menus will violently skip over the notch, creating a jarring, disjointed visual experience.
If you find the notch visually distracting, you don’t have to live with it. You can safely bypass the notch by artificially lowering the top of your screen, rendering the menu bar completely black so the camera cutout becomes 100% invisible.
How to Safely Bypass the Mac Camera Notch
You must use a lightweight, dedicated third-party utility to paint the menu bar black.
- Open Safari and search for a free, open-source utility named TopNotch. (It is widely considered the industry standard for this specific problem).
- Download the
.dmgfile from the official TopNotch website. - Double-click the downloaded file and drag the TopNotch icon into your Applications folder.
- Open your Applications folder and double-click TopNotch to launch it.
- A small, new icon will appear in your top menu bar (it looks like a tiny notch). Click it.
- In the small drop-down menu, click the massive toggle switch to turn it On.
- Ensure you also check the box that says Start at login so you never have to see the notch again after rebooting.
The visual change is stunning and immediate. The utility paints the exact height of your menu bar perfectly, pitch black, seamlessly blending into the hardware bezels of the screen. Your white menu text and battery icons remain perfectly visible, but the physical camera cutout has completely vanished into the darkness.