The notch

The managed Heard app lives in two places: the menu bar and the notch. The notch is the visual half of Heard, think of it as a Dynamic Island for your coding agents: a compact pill around the Mac’s camera housing that expands with live activity. It shows every active coding session as a lane, pops forward when something finishes or needs you, and collapses back to a slim pill when nothing does.

Collapsed

Collapsed, the notch shows a compact pill with an activity sprite and the number of active sessions. It stays out of the way while agents work.

Expanded

Hover the notch to expand it. Each active session appears as a lane with:

• The project name and branch, using your .heard.yaml label when one exists
• The agent and tool for that session
• A status mark: working, idle, waiting on you, running in the background, or done

Click a lane to jump to that session’s terminal. Click anywhere outside the notch to collapse it.

Questions and approvals

When an agent asks a question or waits on an approval, the notch expands on its own and shows the question as a focused card with its options. Click an option to answer, or on Heard Power, hold the talk key and answer out loud. The notch stays open until the question is answered.

Completions

When a session finishes, the notch pops a focused done card for that session, so you can read the result and click through to the terminal. It collapses again after a few seconds unless you are hovering it.

Views

The expanded notch has two views:

Set the default view in Settings, and switch between them from the expanded notch.

Hide the notch

Prefer audio only? Turn the notch off from the Heard menu bar or in Settings. Narration continues either way.