Nano

Nano is a free, open source macOS app made by valenxi that places a Dynamic Island-style surface around the notch, or floating below the menu bar on Macs without one. Hovering it opens a dashboard, and it speaks up for events such as volume changes, AirPods connecting, timers ending or a coding agent waiting for input. It requires macOS 14.6 or later on an Apple silicon Mac and is released under the MIT license.

What It Is

Nano is a menu bar and notch utility that combines everyday widgets with tools for people who run coding agents. The dashboard covers music controls for Apple Music and Spotify, calendar events with meeting links, weather for a chosen place, a focus timer with goals, a camera mirror and a file tray. Volume, brightness, Bluetooth and charging cards replace the standard macOS overlays. The project states that there is no account, no analytics and no ads.

Agents, dictation and add-ons

Optional add-ons stay off until turned on and request permissions only then.

• Agents shows what coding agents are doing, how much of each provider's usage limit remains, and lets you approve or answer them from the island. The README lists Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Grok, Kimi, OpenCode, Pi, Devin, Cline, Qwen Code, Kilo and Goose. Nano does not run the models; it watches sessions you start and takes you back to them.
• Quill is voice dictation: hold a shortcut, talk, and local models such as Parakeet and Whisper type the text at your cursor.
• Sketch lets you talk while marking up the screen and send both to your agent.
• Cue is a per-project to-do list with prompts and screenshots that can sync with Reminders, Todoist and other apps.
• Mixer sets volume per app.

Appearance and setup

The island can be attached to the notch or floating, in Solid Black, Liquid Glass or Hybrid looks, and widgets can be chosen and arranged. Install is via a Homebrew cask or a DMG from GitHub Releases, or by building from source with Xcode. Nano checks GitHub once a day for updates, which can be turned off in settings.

Privacy model

Agent activity, cues, dictation and settings stay on the Mac. Usage checks go directly to each agent's provider using the sign-in it already has, and speech models are downloaded only when selected.