Airdrop app makes MacBook notch useful

The notch found on last year’s MacBook Pros. | Photo by Phil Esposito / The Verge

Most people have more or less gotten over the iPhone’s display notch, the once-controversial design element introduced with the iPhone X in 2017. But feelings are more raw when it comes to the MacBook Pro’s cutout, which only got a notch of its own last year. At least until you see how useful it can be thanks to an app under development by Ian Keen, who’s trying to turn the chunk of missing screen into a feature that makes AirDropping files easier.

In a video posted on Twitter, the developer shows how the app causes the notch to flash when the user is dragging AirDrop-compatible files. The idea is that these can then be dragged and dropped onto the notch itself, at which point a traditional AirDrop share window opens up showing in-range devices that the files can be sent to. It’s a neat shortcut compared to Apple’s official approach, which typically involves either opening up a file and navigating to its Share menu, Control-clicking on the file, or navigating to the dedicated AirDrop section in Finder.

Keen’s app isn’t publicly available just yet, but the developer says he hopes to have a limited version available on TestFlight in the coming days. Although it’s designed to work around notch-equipped MacBooks, he says it should also work on notch-less Macs.