#The usual ways to check AirPods battery on a Mac
macOS reads your AirPods' charge over Bluetooth as soon as they pair, so the information is always sitting there. The friction is purely retrieval: every built-in path asks you to stop what you're doing, aim at a menu bar target, and read a number. Here are the three most people use.
Control Center. Click the Control Center icon in the menu bar, then click into the Sound module. Each connected output device lists its battery percentage underneath. It's reliable, but it's two clicks and a bit of hunting every time you want a quick sanity check.
The Bluetooth menu. If you add Bluetooth to your menu bar (or open it inside Control Center), clicking it lists your paired devices, and hovering the AirPods row reveals the battery level. Accurate, but again: click, hover, read, dismiss.
The volume control. The sound control that lives in Control Center shows the same per-device battery reading when AirPods are the active output. It's the same data as the Sound module, reached a slightly different way depending on how your menu bar is set up.
None of this is hard. It's just that "not hard" and "glanceable" are different things, and for something you check as often as headphone battery, the gap adds up. A quick comparison of what each path costs you:
| Where you look | How you get there | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Control Center → Sound | Click Control Center, expand Sound, read the device row | 2 clicks + a look |
| Bluetooth menu | Click Bluetooth, hover the AirPods row | 1 click + a hover |
| Volume / Sound control | Click the sound control, read the active output | 1 click + a look |
| Notch live activity | Nothing: it appears on connect | 0 clicks, a glance |
Exact click counts vary with your menu bar layout and macOS version. The point is the shape: the built-in paths are pull, the notch is push.
#What the notch changes
The MacBook notch is well suited to this job for the same reasons the iPhone's Dynamic Island is: it sits in a permanent strip of screen above your windows, dead center in your eyeline, and it never gets covered. It's exactly where your attention already goes for system status. If you want the full background on why that strip exists and what physically lives in it, I wrote a separate piece on what the MacBook notch is actually for.
A live activity flips the interaction from pull to push. Instead of you going to find the battery number, the number comes to you: the moment your AirPods connect, a small activity animates out beside the camera housing showing the level, then tucks away. You didn't open anything. You didn't aim at a menu bar target. You looked up, saw it, and moved on. That's the whole difference, and for a value you check reflexively before a call or a walk, it's the difference between a chore and a glance.
macOS itself has no native AirPods live activity on the Mac. As of macOS Tahoe (26) the Dynamic Island is still an iPhone feature, so the notch stays passive unless you add an app. If you're new to the idea, the setup walkthrough in how to get a Dynamic Island on your Mac covers the whole thing end to end.
#What NotchBay shows, honestly
Full disclosure again: I build NotchBay, so read this section as the maker describing his own app. NotchBay treats AirPods battery as one of its live activities. When your AirPods connect, the level surfaces in the notch as a quick activity, the same way music, timers and call controls do. You get the reading without opening Control Center, and it stays a glance rather than a task.
The honest boundary matters here, so let me draw it clearly: NotchBay does not read anything Apple doesn't already expose. It surfaces the same battery data macOS uses for Control Center and the Bluetooth menu. It is a convenience layer over information your Mac already has, not a new sensor or a deeper hook into your hardware. If macOS shows a level, NotchBay can put it in the notch; if macOS reports nothing for a given device, there's nothing to show.
That framing is deliberate. Among the notch apps I've compared, AirPods battery is a common feature rather than a unique one, and I'd rather you understand exactly what it is: a well-placed mirror of a value you already own. NotchBay keeps everything local, with no account and no in-app analytics, so surfacing your battery level doesn't send anything anywhere. It's the same privacy posture as the rest of the app, which I go through in the setup guide.
#The honest part: same data, better placement
It's worth saying plainly, because it's the fair way to pitch a feature like this: putting AirPods battery in the notch does not give you information macOS was hiding. Control Center already has it. The Bluetooth menu already has it. If you're happy opening one of those a few times a day, you lose nothing by skipping a notch app entirely, and that's a completely reasonable choice.
What a notch live activity buys you is placement and timing. The number appears where you're already looking, when it's most relevant, without a click. For some people that's a shrug; for others, checking headphone battery a dozen times a day, it removes a small, repeated friction that adds up. Only you can weigh whether that convenience is worth installing anything. My job is to make sure you're weighing it with accurate expectations, not an inflated claim about what the notch can see.
#Frequently asked questions
How do I check AirPods battery on a Mac?
With your AirPods connected, open Control Center from the menu bar and expand the Sound module: each connected output lists its battery level. You can also add Bluetooth to the menu bar and hover the AirPods row to read the level. A notch app surfaces the same number automatically when the AirPods connect, so you don't have to open anything.
Does the notch show my AirPods case battery?
It shows whatever macOS reports over Bluetooth. macOS typically exposes the case level only when at least one bud is sitting in the case, so the case reading tends to appear in that situation and not while both buds are in your ears. NotchBay does not invent a value; it mirrors what the system already knows.
Which AirPods show battery in the notch?
It depends on what macOS reports. Any AirPods or Beats headphones that report a battery level to macOS over Bluetooth can appear, and most current AirPods models do. NotchBay reads the same data the system uses for Control Center, so if the level shows up there, it can show up in the notch.
