#Two different things named Alcove
Search for alcove by madtree brewing and you are almost certainly after a place to eat in Cincinnati. But the single word "Alcove" is also a product name in Mac software, and search engines do not always keep the two lanes separate. So before anything else, here is the plain sort:
| Name | What it is | Where to go |
|---|---|---|
| Alcove by MadTree | Restaurant and bar in Cincinnati, run by MadTree Brewing | MadTree's official site and Instagram |
| Alcove (the app) | Paid Mac app for the MacBook notch | The app's own website |
| NotchBay | The Mac notch app I build, a competitor to the app above | This site |
If the restaurant is what you want, you can stop reading after the next section. I cannot book you a table or tell you today's specials, and I would rather point you at the people who can than pad this out. The rest of the page is about the software collision, because that is the part I actually know.
#Alcove by MadTree, the Cincinnati restaurant
MadTree Brewing is a Cincinnati brewery, and Alcove is its restaurant-and-bar concept: food and drink alongside the beer, rather than a taproom pour-and-go. Public listings point to a location associated with Over-the-Rhine and another tied to Summit Park in Blue Ash, with MadTree's original taproom sitting separately over in Oakley. That is the shape of it from the outside.
I want to be careful here, because I do not run the place and I will not invent details I cannot stand behind. Restaurant hours move, menus change with the season, and second locations open and close. So treat the paragraph above as orientation, not gospel. For the current address, hours, menu and whether you need a reservation, go straight to MadTree Brewing's own website or the venue's Instagram, which is where the people running it post the real information. If you got here hoping for a phone number, that is the honest place to find it.
Everything from this point on is about software. If food was the whole mission, this is a clean place to leave.
#Alcove, the Mac notch app
The other Alcove is a paid macOS app in a small category of tools that turn the MacBook's camera notch into a live status area, the way the iPhone's Dynamic Island behaves. Move your pointer to the notch and it expands into a card; start a song and playback controls dock beside the camera housing. The app named Alcove leans deliberately minimal: fewer features, clean animation, notification previews and restyled volume and brightness overlays. It predates my own app, and it is a competitor of mine, so weigh that when I describe it. I keep the comparison factual in NotchBay vs Alcove, including where its restraint is the better call.
This whole category exists because Apple never shipped a Dynamic Island for the Mac. The notch is passive hardware; macOS just routes the menu bar around it. Every "Dynamic Island on a Mac" you have seen is a third-party app filling that gap. If the category itself is new to you, I mapped the entire landscape, free and paid, in the Dynamic Island for Mac guide.
#How to tell which one you wanted
The two rarely overlap in practice, so a couple of quick tells sort almost everyone:
- You want the restaurant if your search had food, beer, brunch, patio, reservations, a Cincinnati neighborhood, or MadTree in your head. Nothing here helps beyond pointing you at their site.
- You want the app if you were thinking about a MacBook, the notch, the menu bar, a download, music controls, or an "island" like the iPhone's. That is the software lane, and it is the one I live in.
A small warning for the app lane: names in this space collide constantly. Beyond Alcove the app and Alcove the restaurant, you will bump into NotchNook, DynamicLake, Boring Notch, TopNotch, Atoll and more, several of which sound alike. When you download one, get it from the developer's own site rather than a random mirror, so the name on the page matches the app you actually meant.
#What a Mac notch app actually does
If the software is what pulled you in, here is the useful part, no install required. The category has converged on a handful of jobs, and knowing them makes every app comparison easier to read:
- Live activities. Now playing with a waveform, your next meeting with a join button, AirPods battery on connect, timers, and small status chips for the camera, microphone and Caps Lock.
- HUD replacement. The stock macOS volume and brightness bezels land mid-screen and are hard to miss. Several notch apps redraw them as slim overlays at the notch instead.
- A clipboard tray. The notch as a catch surface for what you copy, with a searchable history. If that specific feature is why you are here, I went deep on the pattern in the Mac clipboard writeup.
- Call controls. Mute and leave for Zoom or Google Meet without hunting for the right window. This one needs Accessibility permission and can break when a video app redesigns its interface.
- Dictation. Start speech-to-text from the notch into whatever app has focus. Done right, the transcription runs entirely on-device.
How much of that you want decides whether you need to pay at all. If music and timers are the whole ask, free and open-source apps cover it and you should not spend anything. Paid apps earn their price on the permission-heavy features: driving other apps during calls, searchable trays, dictation. Beyond the basics, some apps let you tune the look and behavior; I collected those knobs in the Dynamic Island customization guide.
#Where NotchBay fits
Mine, so discount the enthusiasm accordingly. NotchBay is the notch app I build. It does music with a live waveform, a calendar chip that joins your next meeting in one tap, mute and leave controls for Zoom and Google Meet, AirPods battery on connect, the volume and brightness HUDs redrawn at the notch, camera and mic privacy chips, per-app skins, a clipboard tray that keeps roughly 60 recent clips with OCR search inside screenshots, on-device dictation built on Apple's SpeechAnalyzer engine, and drop-to-share to your own Google Drive.
The rule underneath it is that nothing leaves your Mac: no account, clips and transcripts never uploaded, and the only content that touches the network is a Drive upload you trigger yourself. The honest limits, because every app here has them: NotchBay needs macOS 26 (Tahoe) and a notched MacBook, call controls need Accessibility permission, and the Google Meet bridge works in Chromium browsers, not Safari yet. It is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple.
None of which, to be clear, will get you a table at the restaurant.
#Frequently asked questions
Is Alcove by MadTree Brewing the same as the Alcove Mac app?
No. Alcove by MadTree Brewing is a restaurant and bar in Cincinnati, run by the MadTree Brewing company. Alcove is also the name of a paid Mac app that draws a Dynamic Island-style overlay around the MacBook notch. They are unrelated. One serves food and beer, the other is software you download.
Where is Alcove by MadTree Brewing?
Public listings place Alcove by MadTree in Cincinnati, with locations tied to Over-the-Rhine and Summit Park in Blue Ash. MadTree also runs a separate taproom in Oakley. Hours and menus change, so confirm the current address, hours and reservations on MadTree's own site or their Instagram before you drive out.
Does NotchBay have anything to do with the restaurant?
No. NotchBay is a Mac app I build for the MacBook notch. It has no connection to MadTree Brewing or the Alcove restaurant. I wrote this page only because the app named Alcove is a competitor of mine, so the restaurant and the software collide in search.
Is the Alcove Mac app free?
No, Alcove the Mac app is paid; check its own site for the current price and trial. If you only want music and basic activities in the notch, free and open-source options like Boring Notch and Atoll cover that. Paid apps earn their price on call controls, clipboard trays and dictation.
